Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 (Original version)

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896)

Symphony no. 3 in D minor, “Wagner Symphony” (Original version of 1873)

  1. Gemäßigt, misterioso [Moderately, mysterious]
  2. Adagio. Feierlich [Slowly. Solemnly]
  3. Scherzo/Trio. Ziemlich schnell [Fairly fast]
  4. Finale. Allegro

Bruckner and his music constitute one of the strangest phenomena of 19th century music. He was universally acclaimed during his lifetime as one of the greatest organists and improvisers of his time, and cherished by his pupils as a teacher. His music, on the other hand, was the subject of great controversy. Then there was the problem of the man himself, who seemed utterly at odds with the music. The product of a peasant background, unprepossessing in appearance, possessed of a thick regional accent and filled with a religious devotion starkly at odds with the prevailing trends of artistic life in Vienna, even during his lifetime he was considered at best eccentric and at worst an idiot. Even Mahler, a great admirer, reputedly described him as “a naive man - half genius, half imbecile.”

During the 1860s Bruckner’s carer developed from provincial organist and teacher to internationally renowned musician. His own music was not so universally approved. His hero-worship of Wagner set many critics against him on principle, and he struggled to secure performances. The decade had begun traumatically when his beloved mother died in 1861; by 1867 overwork and stress took their toll and he suffered a nervous breakdown. He was diagnosed as suffering from “Numeromania”, a compulsion to count everything from the buttons on his shirt to the stars in the sky. After some months in a sanitorium the symptoms lessened and he was released, but his counting obsession remained (and would erupt in further breakdowns later in life). It seems likely that he suffered some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, or possibly a form of what would now be diagnosed as Asperger’s Syndrome. This would certainly go some way to account for the eccentricities that made his contemporaries dismiss him as a naif or idiot savant.

Bruckner had written two symphonies before his breakdown. The first was written as part of his studies. His “official” First Symphony was composed in the wake of attending the premiere of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and meeting Wagner himself for the first time, both overwhelming experience for him. After his release from the sanitorium he returned quickly to composing, and completed a new symphony in 1869, only to reject it. He marked the score “ø”, thus becoming the only composer to have written a symphony with the official designation “No. 0”. After another false start, Bruckner finally got into his symphonic stride, and by 1876 had completed his Fifth numbered symphony.

In 1873 Bruckner visited Wagner and presented him with the scores of his Second and the almost completed Third Symphonies, and requested permission to dedicate one of them to him. Wagner agreed to accept the dedication during an evening that must have been quite heady: the next day Bruckner was so hungover that he was unsure which symphony was to be dedicated to Wagner. He wrote to him: “Symphony in D minor in which the trumpet begins the theme?” Wagner’s reply was to the point: “Yes! Yes! Best wishes!” Having completed the symphony, he sent a copy to Wagner in 1874 bearing the dedication “in deepest reverence to the most honourable Herr, Richard Wagner, the unequalled, world famous and sublime master of poetry and music.” This may seem rather overwrought, but it was not untypical of Bruckner's manner. Many contemporaries noted his extraordinarily obsequious bearing with those he considered his superiors (which for a provincial Austrian meant most people in Vienna). His reaction on his first meeting with Wagner had after all been to fall to his knees and declare, “Master! I worship you!”, so Wagner cannot have been too surprised at Bruckner’s oleaginous dedication; indeed he probably considered it no more than his due.

It was at this point that one of Bruckner’s most notorious habits began to manifest itself in earnest: his predilection for revision. Much speculation has been advanced about why he reworked so many works so extensively. Many of the later versions of his symphonies were made by pupils and conductors such as the Schalk brothers, whose admiration of their teacher seems to be equal only to their conviction that he was incapable of producing a symphony without their aid. The degree to which Bruckner agreed with their amendments, or simply acquiesced in the hope of securing a performance, or was simply too feeble-minded to resist, is a subject of much controversy. Bruckner made sure, however, to preserve the manuscripts of all his original versions.

The Third Symphony exists, depending on how one counts these things, in upwards of of a dozen versions. As soon as he had delivered the score to Wagner, in 1874 he was already at work on a revision. Between 1876 and 1877 he worked again on it in preparation for its disastrous first performance in 1878. The conductor died days before the concert, and Bruckner took to the podium. Even if he had been an adequate conductor, the hostility of the orchestra did not help. The audience began leaving even before the performance had begun, and by the end there was almost nobody left (one of the few who did stay to the end was the young Mahler). The debacle prompted a further round of revisions before its was published in 1879, the first Bruckner symphony to see print. Bruckner could not leave it alone, though, and further revisions followed, this time with considerable input/interference from Franz Schalk, which eventually resulted in a “final” version in 1889.

Some of Bruckner’s initial revisions were concerned with niceties of notation, but others were undoubtedly made with a view to securing a performance, and this meant cuts. Particularly in the case of the finale, this did considerable damage to the music, making Bruckner’s original, carefully considered and paced movement into something that comes across as disjointed, with a final climax that appears bolted on rather than the natural progression of his original conception. This alone makes hearing the original score a revelation, but there are many other details to savour which are lost in the more familiar later versions.

Appropriately for the “Wagner” Symphony, the piece is filled with allusions to Wagner’s music, most of which were removed in the revisions that followed. How much these were apart of Bruckner’s plan from the outset, and how much they were inserted later in composition after Wagner accepted the dedication is not certain. Many of these allusions (it is perhaps overstating the case to describe them as quotations) derive from Bruckner’s favourite Wagner opera Die Walküre and Tristan and Isolde, which had made such an indelible impression on him at its premiere. This hints at a personal significance to Bruckner, an impression which is reinforced by quotations from Bruckner’s own music: The main theme of his Second Symphony is quoted several times, and at crucial points in the first two movements he also alludes to the “Miserere” from his own Mass in D minor, while the very opening of the symphony is reworked from his rejected Symphony “No. 0”. Many of these allusions may be connected to the fact that he wrote the symphony at least partly in memory of his mother.

The second movement is an expansive affair in its original form, alternating a prayer-like theme with a contrasting, more flowing idea. The memory of his mother is foremost here; he alludes to the “sleep” motif from Die Walküre, and the motif from his “Miserere” recurs. The dancing third movement comes as a complete contrast to the devotional mood that precedes it.

The finale begins in a turbulent fashion, before taking a most unlikely sidestep in the form of a polka, over which intones a solemn chorale. Bruckner explained this late in life to his biographer August Göllerich. Walking through Vienna, they passed the Sühnhaus, where the architect and restorer of St Stephen’s Cathedral, Friedrich Schmidt, was lying in state. From the house next door could be heard the sound of dancing. “Listen! Here in the house there is a ball, and next door the Master lies on his bier! That’s how life is, and this is what I wanted to describe in the last movement of my third symphony. The polka stands for humour and happiness in the world; the chorale for the sadness and pain.” For a composer such as Mahler, a juxtaposition such as this would demand a pitched battle between the two opposites; for Bruckner however, it is simply a fact of life and no contradiction that the two exist side by side. It is a cause not for conflict, but rather contemplation. There is a brief recollection of themes from earlier movements, before the opening movement’s trumpet theme returns in a blaze of glory to conclude the symphony.

The many pauses that occur throughout this movement (and indeed the whole symphony), were seen as eccentric by his contemporaries (and most were excised in the revisions). They are however an essential part of Bruckner’s style, a device for reflection on the many contrasts and contradictions his music presents. In these silences it is as though for a moment we peek behind the process unfolding, and for a moment see Bruckner himself, communing with God and asking: what next? And counting, always counting.

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C

  1. Andante - Allegro (C major)
  2. Tema con variazioni (E minor)
  3. Allegro, ma non troppo (C major)

Prokofiev was above all a practical composer who rarely let an idea go to waste. While most of the themes used in his Third Piano Concerto were conceived for it, some were leftovers from abandoned projects - two themes that appear in the finale, for instance, began life as sketches for a string quartet. He noted down the first ideas in 1913 in Russia, but most of the work was done between 1917 and 1921. By this time he had fled Russia in the wake of the revolution and was based in Paris. Once he had amassed enough ideas, it was simply a matter of crafting them into a convincing whole.

In 1921, after debuts in Paris and London, Prokofiev spent most of the spring and summer in the village of St. Brevin-les-Pins in Brittany. Here he had for the first time since leaving Russia a sense of calm and happiness, and work progressed well on his current composition projects: his Opera The Fiery Angel, a collection of songs, and his Third Piano Concerto. His ballet The Love for Three Oranges was due to be performed in Chicago, as was the new concerto, and Diaghilev was planning to employ him for another ballet score. All in all his prospects looked good.

He discovered that another Russian emigre,the poet Konstantin Balmont, was living nearby. The acquaintance soon became a friendship and a creative partnership. Prokofiev wrote a song-cycle on his poems. Balmont, who had fallen on hard times and was immensely cheered to make Prokofiev’s acquaintance, wrote a sonnet in response to the new concerto after Prokofiev played parts of it through to him on the “horrible upright piano” (his wife’s description) on which he was composing it. Prokofiev returned the compliment by dedicating the concerto to the poet.

The premiere came in Chicago in December 1921. “My Third Concerto has turned out to be devilishly difficult, “ he wrote to his friend Serge Koussevitsky’s wife and secretary Natalia a few days before. “I’m nervous and I’m practising hard three hours a day.” The American critics received the new concerto positively if not wildly enthusiastically; the concerto began to attain the phenomenal popularity that it still enjoys only after European and Russian audiences had heard it.

Prokofiev was working hard to establish himself in the West as a soloist, and had made successful debuts in Paris and London. But there was competition in the form of another expatriate, Sergei Rachmaninoff. It is perhaps not too fanciful to imagine that the new concerto’s melodicism and simplicity was Prokofiev's attempt to take on Rachmaninoff on his own terms. (Meanwhile, Prokofiev's rising profile as a composer in America would similarly influence Rachmaninoff to adopt a more abrasive style in his later music.) “Let the maestro be calm”, he wrote to Koussevitzky, with whom he would often perform it. “This is not a Stravinsky symphony - there are no complicated meters, no dirty tricks. It can be conducted without special preparation - it is difficult for the orchestra, but not for the conductor.”

Adams: Harmonielehre

John Adams (b. 1947)

Harmonielehre


1. Part I (Untitled)

2. Part II: The Anfortas Wound

3. Part III: Meister Eckhardt and Quackie


Harmonielehre takes its title from a book written in 1911 by Arnold Schoenberg. It is far more than simply a student’s textbook: as well as an exhaustive treatise laying out the full extent of traditional tonal harmony, it is also a philosophical rumination on that tradition. It was written at a crucial point in Schonberg’s career, when he was in the process of abandoning the very tradition that he exhaustively documents in his book. Although usually translated as “Theory of Harmony”, the title’s literal translation, “Harmony Book”, perhaps better reflects its author’s approach. Schoenberg is dismissive of abstract theory, insisting that knowledge of composition must be learned not by absorbing received wisdom, but through practical experience. “If I should succeed in teaching the pupil the handicraft of our art as completely as a carpenter can teach his,” he writes, “then I shall be satisfied.”

Although John Adams’ Harmonielehre sounds little like anything Schoenberg wrote, it is fundamentally connected to him, and to Adams’ ambivalence about him. One of Adams’ teachers at Harvard, Leon Kirchner, had studied with Schoenberg in the 1940s. Although he was not interested in Schoenberg’s compositional innovations, Kirchner nevertheless inherited his teacher’s high seriousness, and in turn transmitted it to his own pupil. For Adams, Schoenberg stands as a Master in the lineage of Bach and Beethoven. Adams is attracted to this notion of the “Great Composer”, and admires and loves Schoenberg (and could be heard recently on Radio 4 vigorously defending him from an attack by Howard Goodall). However, he feels uneasy about what he sees as Schoenberg's adoption of a “priestly” role, taking 19th-century individualism to an extreme. He also faced a contradiction between his awe of Schoenberg’s persona, and the fact that he found much of his music unattractive. By day Adams and his fellow pupils would enthuse over the revolutionary scores of the European avant-garde; by night Adams returned to his rooms to play Jimi Hendrix records.

After he graduated, Adams rejected the high modernism that held sway in academia. Instead he turned to a style that in its own way was just as revolutionary: Minimalism. The primary features of this music were the exact things that Schoenberg’s disciples went out of their way to avoid: regular pulses, repetition, and explicit tonality. This would hardly raise an eyebrow now, even in American universities, but in the 60s and 70s to use such techniques was tantamount to a declaration of war on the academic establishment.

While taking up much of the sounds and textures of minimalist music, Adams nevertheless remained in many ways attached to the traditional concert-hall, and wanted not simply to reject Schoenberg as an influence, but to settle his relationship with him. In the early 80s he wrote a number of works that address Schoenberg’s legacy directly: in his Chamber Symphony, he parodies the hyperactive late-romantic style of early Schoenberg by juxtaposing it with cartoon-like music. Harmonielehre is also a parody, but in an older sense of the word: Adams uses a number of key works from the early 20th century, particularly Schoenberg’s cantata Gurrelieder and Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, as bases on which his own music is built, fusing their harmonies and expression with Adams’s minimalist-derived technique. Adams makes it clear that here no irony is intended.

All three movements take further inspiration from dreams and concepts from psychoanalysis. Adams has a long-standing interest in the ideas of Carl Jung, and Schoenberg as a resident of early 20th-century Vienna was likewise fascinated by the then new ideas of Freud about the role of the subconscious. The pounding chords that open and close Part One are inspired by a dream Adams had in which he “watched a gigantic supertanker take off from the surface of San Francisco Bay and thrust itself into the sky like a Saturn rocket.” In contrast to the vigorous ouster sections, Adams describes the central part of the movement as a “Sehnsucht”. This German word is generally translated as “yearning”, but this does not convey the full force of its meaning. C.S. Lewis perhaps came closer when he defined it as “an inconsolable longing in the human heart, for we know not what.”

Anfortas, King of the Knights who protected the Holy Grail, suffered a self-inflicted wound from his spear, which would not heal. Anfortas is an example of a Jungian archetype; a mythical figure which stands for a personality trait. He represents a condition of depression which the patient feels incapable of escaping, and which hence becomes self-perpetuating and debilitating. Here Adams has in mind early 20th-century angst; in an interview with the New Yorker columnist Alex Ross, Adams describes Schoenberg “like some religious zealot cutting off his genitals to prove how totally pure he is, how dedicated to the Lord.” Part Two alludes to such music, particularly Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony, and at its climax, screams in evocation of Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony.

In utter contrast, the opening of Part Three floats in bright light. The title (“Zappa-ish”, in the composer’s words) refers to another dream of Adams’s, in which he saw his daughter (briefly known as “Quackie” as a baby) flying on the shoulders of the medieval theologian, mystic and accused blasphemer Meister Eckhardt, “as they hover among the heavenly bodies like figures painted on the high ceilings of old cathedrals.” Perhaps Eckhardt here is an avatar for Adams himself, questioning and rejecting elements of the academic truths he inherited. The music builds to a triumphant climax which may seem a definitive rejection of Schoenberg. But in forging his own path, Adams has remained true to Schoenberg’s ideals: “Had I told [my pupils] merely what I know, then they would have known just that and nothing more. As it is, they know perhaps even less. But they do know what matters: the search itself!

Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915


Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Knoxville: Summer of 1915

Barber came across James Agee’s prose-poem 'Knoxville: Summer of 1915' in an anthology in 1946 when he was searching for something suitable to set to music in response to a commission from the soprano Eleanor Steber. Agee’s text, written in 1938, is a vivid and romantic evocation of the Tennessee summers of his childhood. 1915 was a significant year for Agee; it was the last summer he spent with his father, who was killed in a car accident the following year. The text's rosy nostalgia is thus tinged with a melancholy for an unrecoverable time. After his untimely death in 1955 it was incorporated into his posthumously published novel A Death in the Family, which is based on the events surrounding his father’s death.

Barber was immediately struck by how closely the summer evening Agee described paralleled his own childhood memories: “You see, it expresses a child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep,” he explained in an interview recorded to accompany the first broadcast performance in 1949. He later recalled that “Agee’s poem was vivid and moved me deeply, and my musical response that summer of 1947 was immediate and intense. I think I must have composed Knoxville within a few days.” It was not simply childhood memories that were stirred by reading Agee’s words; as Barber composed his setting, his own father was gravely ill, and died only a few months after Knoxville’s composition. Barber dedicated the work to him.

Barber uses about a third of the original text in his setting, and quotes Agee’s opening sentence at the head of the score: “We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.” The text moves between the viewpoint of the child experiencing the scene, and the adult’s recollection of it, so fluidly that it is often ambiguous which perspective we are experiencing.

In 1915 the First World War was raging in Europe, but America had yet to be drawn into it. This sense of two eras grating against each other is what gives Knoxville its power and lifts it above cosy nostalgia. We hear it in the way the easy, secure rocking of the opening is suddenly interrupted by the intrusion of a streetcar, a herald of the new century that is about to obliterate the old certainties, and also in the climactic payer: “May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.”

Bartók: Dance Suite

Béla Bartók (1881- 1945)

Dance Suite
  1. Moderato —
  2. Allegro molto —
  3. Allegro vivace —
  4. Molto tranquillo —
  5. Comodo —
  6. Finale. Allegro
There has been a settlement on the site of the Hungarian capital since the first century BC, but it was not until 1873 that the two cities built around the military fortresses of Buda and Pest, were united along with the city of Óbuda into a single city. The creation of Budapest was a result of rapid expansion of its three constituent cities following the treaty of 1867 that re-established the sovereignty of the kingdom of Hungary. The retention of a single Emperor of Austria-Hungary gave the illusion of stability, but in fact this was a major turning point in the long decline of the Austrian Empire. In the wake of the First World War the empire finally collapsed, and Hungary became a republic.

The next few years were a period of great instability. The republic disbanded the army, whereupon Hungary was invaded by Romania, Czechoslovakia and Serbia, losing nearly three-quarters of its territory in the process. The republican government was subsequently overthrown and a “Republic of Councils” established, taking its cue from the Communist revolution in nearby Russia. A counterrevolution followed in which the Communists were ousted by the Romanian army. After the Romanians left the Hungarian National Army took control and restored the kingdom, although not the Habsburg monarch who had reigned in the days of empire: instead the head of the National Army, Admiral Miklós Horthy, was declared Regent.

After the chaos of the post-war years, the 50th anniversary of the unification of Budapest was a perfect opportunity for the country to restore some of it battered pride. Bartók’s Dance Suite was commissioned in 1923 as part of the celebrations. Its six movements draw on folk styles from all the major ethnic traditions of Hungary, although all the themes are original. In an analysis published in 1931, Bartók declared that “[t]he aim of the whole work was to put together a kind of idealised folk music – you could say an invented folk music – in such a way that the individual movements of the work should introduce particular types of music. Folk music of all nationalities served as a model: Magyar, Rumanian, Slovak, and even Arabic. In fact, here and there is even a hybrid of these species.”

There is perhaps an element of nostalgia in this, reflecting the loss of so much of Hungary’s diversity along with so much of its territory: the “ritornello” that connects the first and second, second and third, and fourth and fifth dances and also returns during the finale gives voice to a wistful air. But overwhelmingly the spirit of the Dance Suite is one of celebration, of the power of folk music and its potential for renewal. For the newly divorced and remarried Bartók this sentiment may well have had a personal as well as political significance.

KSO Season 58 2013-2014

Unless otherwise stated, all concerts take place at St. John's, Smith Square and are conducted by Russell Keable.

Tuesday 15 October 2013
Bartók: Dance Suite
Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
John Adams: Harmonielehre

Monday 25 November 2013 at Milton Court
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3
Piano: Nikolai Demidenko
Bruckner: Symphony No. 3

Monday 20 January 2014 at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Mussorgsky: St John's Night on the Bare Mountain (original version)
Liszt: Totentanz
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique 


Saturday 15 March 2014, with guest conductor Jacques Cohen

Programme to include

Walton: Symphony No. 1  


Monday 12 May 2014 at Milton Court
Rachmaninov: The Isle of the Dead
Debussy: La Mer
Lutosławski: Symphony No. 3 


 Monday 23 June 2014
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet - Fantasy Overture
Kodály: Dances of Galánta
Nielsen: Symphony No. 2  

Dvořák: Symphony No. 7

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)
Symphony No.7 in D minor, Op.70



  1. Allegro maestoso
  2. Poco adagio
  3. Scherzo: Vivace – Poco meno mosso
  4. Finale: Allegro




Duration: 35'
Publisher: Public Domain
KSO performed: 2013, 1999


Older readers may just be able to recall a time when there were London evening newspapers other than the Evening Standard. Unless there are any Methuselahs present tonight, however, it is unlikely any would remember the Pall Mall Gazette. The Gazette was founded in 1865, and became successful enough that it absorbed a lesser paper, the Globe, in 1921 before being itself merged with a rival in 1923 - ironically enough, the Standard.  It took its name from the fictional newspaper in Thackeray’s The History of Pendennis, and over its lifetime printed the work of many notable writers. In turn it became referenced itself in fiction, appearing in Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and The Time Machine.


One scoop the newspaper secured in 1886 was an interview with Antonín Dvořák, who was in England for the first performance of his oratorio St. Ludmilla. In it Dvořák talked of his upbringing and his approach to composition. Asked by the (anonymous) interviewer what he thought of the English, then widely considered to be an utterly unmusical species, Dvořák replied, “So far as my experience of English audiences goes I can only say that people who had not a good deal of love for music in them would hardly sit for four hours closely following an oratorio from beginning to end, and evidently enjoy doing it. As to their being good musicians, I judge them by the orchestras who have played my compositions under my own direction, and it has struck me every time. With regard to music it is with the English as it is with the Slavs in politics--they are young, very young, but there is great hope for the future.”


Perhaps here Dvořák had found a reason for the extraordinary enthusiasm for his music in England.   Since his Stabat Mater had been performed there in 1883 there had been an explosion of enthusiasm for his music. Following the similarly sudden success of his Slavonic Dances in 1878, this firmly established Dvořák as an international figure.


The road to this success had been a long one.  As he related in his interview with the Gazette, Dvořák came from humble beginning: his father was a butcher and innkeeper (“which two occupations generally go together with us in Bohemia”). When he was 10 he was sent to the village of Zlonice to be educated at a German-speaking school, as was the custom for Czechs in the Austrian Empire. At the same time he began to teach himself the violin.  In Zlonice he was given rudimentary music lessons, enough to enable him to play his fiddle with street musicians when he returned home for the holidays.  His parents were supportive of his musical ambitions, and despite their poverty managed to arrange for him to attend the Organ School in Prague. When he finished his studies in 1859, Dvořák began a decade of graft as a musician in dance bands and pit orchestras in Prague.


By 1874 Dvořák was married and settled in the post of organist at the church of St Vojtěch.  He applied for the Austrian State Stipendum, a grant given to artists.  He was awarded grants for four years running, but more importantly made the acquaintance of Johannes Brahms, who was one of the judges. Brahms wrote to the publisher Simrock recommending Dvořák as a publishing prospect. With the approval of Brahms (who soon became a close friend) and the imprint of Simrock behind him, Dvořák’s stock rocketed, and in 1884 the butcher’s son was on his way to England.  He was made an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society, which also commissioned him to write a new symphony, his seventh.


His seventh to be composed, perhaps, but it was not known as such during his lifetime.  Although four of his previous six symphonies had been performed, Simrock had published only one, the sixth, as “Symphony No.1” .  When he took the new symphony on, therefore, Simrock numbered it as Dvořák’s Second (and subsequently issued the fifth as “No. 3”). Simrock nearly did not publish the symphony at all, after he and Dvořák fell out over the difference between the fee Simrock was prepared to pay and the fee Dvořák felt he was due. The dispute was eventually resolved in Dvořák’s favour, but the issue flared up again a few years later, which would lead to his next symphony being published by the English firm of Novello & Co.

The Seventh (as we may now definitively refer to it) is a self-consciously epic work by a composer highly aware of his position as both an internationally renowned composer and a representative of his people’s nascent national identity.  From its brooding opening though its lyrical and fiery middle movements  to its noble yet tragic conclusion it reflects the time of its creation, and the struggles of the Czech people to establish a voice and a nation for themselves. Yet it also looks wider: Dvořák takes many cues from Brahms, whose third symphony had recently been unveiled, and which influence can be heard particularly strongly in the second movement.   The note he scribbled on the sketch for this movement, “From the sad years”, refers to the Czech longing for independence, but also to more personal concerns.  The recent death of his mother was still at the front of his mind, but this must also have brought back memories of the previous decade, hen in the pace of two years his three eldest children all died in infancy.  Perhaps this sharp demonstration of the fragility of life spurred Dvořák to play his part in the rebirth of his nation. “Twenty years ago we Slavs were nothing,” he told the Gazette. “Now we feel our national life once more awakening, and who knows but that the glorious times may come back which five centuries ago were ours, when all Europe looked up to the powerful Czechs, the Slavs, the Bohemians, to whom I, too, belong, and to whom I am proud to belong.”

Matthew Taylor: Storr

Matthew Taylor (b. 1964)
Storr

Duration: 15'
Publisher: Peters Edition
KSO performed: 2013
                                                            
“The Old Man of Storr” (or “Storr”) is a collection of rock formations which lie high on the Totteridge peninsular on the Isle of Skye. It is one of the most impressive and best loved sights on the island noted particularly for its highly distinctive craggy outcrops, appearing like jagged, giant teeth protruding from the ground. But equally spectacular is the massive expanse of barren terrain just below these cliffs known as “The Sanctuary”.
I was so struck by the beauty, majesty and grandeur of Storr after my first ascent that I felt compelled to compose a symphonic poem on the subject, even if the precise character, scoring and overall architecture of the piece still remained unclear at this early stage.
When my old friend Tom Hammond approached me with the idea of commissioning a new work for the Essex Symphony Orchestra he suggested a piece which might provide a parallel, in a general sense, with two other works  which conjure specific landscapes, The “Needles” Overture and “Blasket Dances” . The choice of “Storr” seemed obvious.
The work is cast in four continuous sections and last about 13 minutes. The opening is slow and spacious but becomes increasingly reflective and lyrical as it continues, suggesting the first impressions of Storr in the midst of ever- changing cloud formations seen from a distance and at ground level. It leads directly into a second fast section which evokes a steep ascent through forestry with sudden flickers of sunlight and occasional glimpses of bright sky. The texture of the music is very light and transparent but nonetheless highly charged and active, perhaps resembling something of the mood of a Mendelssohn scherzo. Eventually a climax is reached which marks the opening of the third part. There is a more deliberate, striding momentum here conveying large open spaces on a plateau which soon relaxes into an extended flute solo - distant bird song . The final section, another ascent, takes the form of a vigorous fugue introduced by cellos. This last climb is perhaps the most strenuous part of the journey, but there is nonetheless a great sense of expectancy as the summit of Storr is now very close, even if we are more fully exposed to the elements. But we are rewarded with magnificent vistas when reaching the peak where the music culminates on a huge string chord stretching over many octaves clearly outlining the tonal centre of E.
                                                                                        
Storr was commissioned by the Essex Symphony Orchestra with funds provided by the PRS Foundation and The Britten Pears Foundation. It was first performed by the Essex Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tom Hammond in Christchurch , Chelmsford, Essex on Saturday 3 March 2012.
It is dedicated to Charles and Jo Warden, my wife’s parents who were the first to introduce me to the glories of Skye. The full score was composed between March and August 2011.
The performance tonight is the London premiere.
                                                                                      
© Matthew Taylor 2011

Lyadov: Eight Russian Folk Songs

Anatoly Lyadov (1855-1914)
Eight Russian Folk Songs, Op. 58


  1. Religious Chant. Moderato
  2. Christmas Carol “Kolyada”. Allegretto
  3. Plaintive Song. Andante
  4. Humorous Song “I Danced With The Gnat”. Allegretto
  5. Legend Of The Birds. Allegretto
  6. Cradle Song. Moderato
  7. Round Dance. Allegro
  8. Village Dance Song. Vivo

Duration: 15'
Publisher: Public Domain
KSO performed: 2013 



If Lyadov is remembered at all now, it is generally as the composer who failed to come up with the goods for Diaghilev, thus paving the way for a young upstart called Igor Stravinsky to make his name.  This is rather unfair.  Although Diaghilev certainly considered Lyadov for the job, there is little evidence that he got as far as asking him about it, and none that Lyadov ever received such an offer.  A good story often wins out against facts, however, and so Lyadov’s place in history remains as the composer too lazy to write The Firebird.


Nevertheless, it remains true that Lyadov never managed to complete any of the larger scale works that he began. It all began so brightly for him.  He was born into a musical family: his father was a conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre. He entered the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1870 aged only 14, initially to study piano and violin, but soon joining Rimsky-Korsakov’s composition class. Unfortunately his appalling attendance record at lectures led to his expulsion in 1876, although he did manage to secure re-admittance two years later in time to graduate.  Thereafter he held a number of teaching posts at the Conservatory, and was considered a talented pianist and conductor, as well as a sympathetic teacher.

If he had indeed inherited a family trait of lack of concentration and slack approach to work, his meagre output is at least as much due to an intense self-criticism and lack of confidence in his own ability.   His great strength was as a miniaturist, evident in his piano pieces and orchestral tone poems. In the late 1890s he developed a growing preoccupation with Russian folk song, and eventually published several volumes of tunes that he had collected for the Imperial Geographical Society.  Some of these he arranged for orchestra, and this suite of eight finely-crafted miniatures was completed in 1906.

Mahler: Symphony No. 7

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No.7


  1. Langsam – Allegro risoluto, ma non troppo
  2. Nachtmusik (I): Allegro moderato. Molto moderato (Andante)
  3. Scherzo: Schattenhaft. Fließend aber nicht zu schnell (Shadowy. Flowing but not too fast)
  4. Nachtmusik (II): Andante amoroso
     5.   Rondo-Finale


Duration: 80'
Publisher: Bote & Bock (Boosey & Hawkes)
KSO performed: 1995, 2013


Mahler in Vienna
Concert life in Vienna in the first decade of the 20th century was an exclusive affair.  The concerts at the Musikverein where the Vienna Philharmonic performed were private occasions, and a second concert hall did not exist until the construction of the Konzerthaus in 1913.  Most people’s experience of music making was through playing at home and through dancing in the Dance Halls.  This was not to say that events in the high cultural life of the city were not of concern to the citizens.  The newspapers were a powerful force for debate, and reports on such matters as Mahler’s appointment as director of the Vienna Court Opera in 1897 (and later sacking) were the fuel for many debates and arguments in middle-class households, most of whom would never actually have attended an opera or concert.  For the emerging bourgeoisie, not having much actual experience of High Art was no barrier to having an opinion about it.


This growing number of people whose experience of culture was based on reading about it in the papers rather than experiencing it first-hand (whether through attending concerts or playing at home) is reflected in an innovation introduced by the Vienna Philharmonic in the 1890s - programme notes.  That the orchestra identified a need for explanatory notes for its audience reflects the decline in a musical tradition and literacy that would once have been taken for granted - but also a new bourgeois audience who were keen to be seen as consumers of high culture, but came from backgrounds lacking the kind of musical education that Vienna’s elite classes took for granted.  


Although by now the empire had granted its  Jewish population full citizenship, old prejudices remained.  Mahler converted to Catholicism in 1897 in order to secure the post at the Vienna Opera: as a Jew he would otherwise have been barred from taking the post. If Mahler's conversion seems cynical to us, at the time it was not such a  remarkable thing to do. Viennese Jews were keen to integrate with Austrian society as fully as possible, and for many their religion was more a matter of social conventions than deeply held beliefs.  Although Mahler’s tenure would prove controversial, the most vocal opposition to him came from antisemitic factions that still had a prominent influence in the city (not least in necessitating Mahler's conversion in the first place).


In his 10 years at the opera he introduced no fewer than 33 new operas to the company’s repertoire. In 1905, as he completed the Seventh Symphony, Mahler had hoped to secure the first performance of Richard Strauss’s new opera Salome.  On this occasion he did not get his way. The Court Theatre’s Censorship Board decided that on religious and moral grounds the libretto was unacceptable, and banned it.


He raised the standard of performance considerably, but not without resistance. His flamboyant conducting style and his dictatorial manner caused many ructions with his singers and musicians. It was said that he treated the players “as a lion tamer treats his animals.”  By the time he resigned he had reached a level of celebrity that few could hope to attain.  His work as a composer was controversial, but even his severest critics acknowledged his talent as a conductor and musician.  


Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century was a city of contradictions.  During the 1870s it was extensively rebuilt, and by the time Mahler returned in 1897 had become one of the earliest examples of a modern city. It had become a fertile breeding ground for new ideas, both artistic and scientific.  Sigmund Freud’s theories of the subconscious mind and the significance of dreams influenced the development of Expressionism, as seen in the work of the likes of Gustav Klimt, Arthur Schnitzler, and Arnold Schönberg.  


Yet Vienna was also the centre of  a large, declining empire.  It was therefore also host to a population filled with a complacent, conservative mindset.  The rise of a middle-class also meant the rise of a middlebrow bourgeois culture. The undisputed king of Viennese music in 1897 when Mahler arrived at the Opera was the waltz king, Johann Strauss II. The only composer in the city with a comparable reputation was Johannes Brahms, whose last public appearance barely a month before his death that year was to attend a Strauss première.  Strauss’s nostalgic, cosy music reinforced Vienna’s idea of itself as a place apart from the rest of the world.  Mahler, a man of international ambitions, was uncomfortable with this insular atmosphere and determined to shake things up.  Throughout the nineteenth century there developed a trend for favouring old music over new.  When Mahler was a student there was already a visible trend for “historical” programming. By the time he left Vienna for the second time in 1907 this had developed into a chasm between composers and audiences, and the separation of “high” and “low” culture was entrenched: on the one hand, Mahler and Richard Strauss, on the other Lehár and Johann Strauss.  


Mahler’s own music reflects this heady mix of old and new, in its combination of complex music following in the traditions laid down by Beethoven and Brahms which nevertheless included “low” art, in the form of folk tunes, popular music and other sounds that could be heard on the street. This tended to result in the dismissal of his music on both sides of the cultural divide.  He found supporters in a younger generation of Viennese composers determined to shake up the conservative city.  Webern professed Mahler’s Seventh Symphony to be his favourite, particularly because of its highly original approach to orchestration which influence can be seen in his own orchestral music. Webern’s teacher Schönberg was initially a skeptic as far as Mahler’s music was concerned. However, hearing an early performance of the Seventh Symphony transformed his opinion, and he was thereafter a devoted acolyte.

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Mahler’s composing routine was strict: he composed in the summer while on holiday in Maiernigg, a small alpine hamlet on the shore of the Wörthersee.  He rose at 5.30am each day  and swam in the lake before retreating to his studio where he would work for seven hours.  He would begin work on a new symphony at the same time as he produced the final score of the work he had sketched the previous summer. Thus as he put the final touches to the score of his Sixth Symphony in 1904, he quickly drafted two movements for a seventh - the two Nachtmusiken (“Night-Music”, or nocturnes).  However, when he returned the next year he found himself devoid of inspiration as to how to continue. Unusually, he had no clear overall plan for the shape of the new symphony, and struggled to find a suitable context for the two movements.  After two weeks of getting nowhere, he broke his routine and went hiking in the Dolomites instead, hoping that walking would inspire him as it had in the past. Still no ideas came, and Mahler despondently marched back down to Krumpendorf, the village on the opposite shore of the lake, where he took a boat across the water back to Maiernigg. As he later related to his wife, this was the turning point: “I got into the boat to be rowed across. At the first stroke of the oars the theme (or rather the rhythm and character) of the introduction to the first movement came into my head.” His writer’s block finally cleared, Mahler proceeded to sketch out the rest of the symphony, completed the work in sketch by the end of August, and the orchestration the next year. As was his way, he would tinker with the details of the work on several occasions thereafter until (and beyond) its first performance in 1908.


The form of the Seventh Symphony harks back to the fifth in dividing into three parts: the two large outer movements surrounding three short character pieces in the middle. Moreover these three central pieces display a further symmetry, with the central scherzo flanked on either side by the two “Nachtmusiken”.  The entire symphony thus forms a vast arch.  The “rowing” music that opens the symphony was the idea that triggered Mahler’s imagination to complete the symphony, but the vast opening movement itself was the last to be completed.  Over the slow tattoo a tenor horn (an instrument familiar to Mahler through military bands rather than orchestras) declaims a haunting theme - “Here Nature roars,” he described it.  Mahler’s music frequently evokes nature, but rarely as wildly as in this movement, which takes as its inspiration the Carinthian Mountains where Mahler often walked.


The central triptych of the symphony begins with the first “Nachtmusik”, which Mahler composed after being entranced by Rembrandt’s painting “The Night Watch”. The movement is not an attempt to portray the painting, but merely seeks to create a similar atmosphere. The third movement is marked “Schattenhaft” [shadowy], and is one of the spookiest of the phantasmagorical scherzos in which Mahler specialised. wisps of dance rhythms pass by, parodies of Viennese Ländler and waltzes loom out of the darkness.  Then follows the second Nachtmusik, which is an altogether more romantic affair than its sibling.  Here Mahler celebrates the romantic view of night, the time when lovers (perhaps illicitly) come together.  It takes the character of a serenade, its character defined by the presence of a guitar and mandolin.


The finale appears to begin straightforwardly enough as an explosion of daylight after the three shadowy ones that preceded it, and soon blossoms into a triumphalist mood reminiscent of a theme from Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürenburg. This affinity was only emphasised by Mahler’s programming of the overture from that opera alongside the Seventh Symphony at early performances. But suddenly this is cut off and the music heads down an entirely different street.  This sets the pattern for the entire movement; the grand, solemn music returns again and again, but is never allowed to establish itself, and comes to seem progressively more pompous than majestic. Less important passages are given strident cadences, while more substantial ideas peter out. The effect is profoundly disorienting and unsettling. When the final peroration comes, Mahler deploys the orchestra in such a way as to make it seem bombastic and empty: blaring brass and timpani played with hard sticks to produce a harsh, brittle sound.  Just at the very end Mahler unleashes one more surprise which leaves the final C major chord feeling less like a triumphant conclusion than a punch in the face.


This collision between Wagnerian grandeur and parodies of Leháresque middlebrow Viennese kitsch may be Mahler’s portrait of the society he moved in.  Some commentators suggest that Mahler intended to write a conventional, triumphal finale but failed. Perhaps though, the failure of this model is exactly what Mahler intended: Die Meistersinger is an opera about opera, so this is a symphony about symphonies, and its finale a comment on the impossibility of returning to the naive optimism of earlier ages.  Mahler himself refused to provide any kind of programme for it, despite repeated cajoling by friends, so there can be no definitive answer as to its meaning. “Everything has its price!” was all he would say.  Perhaps the daylight represents not a triumph over dark night thoughts, but the obliteration of profound, romantic ideals by the banality of everyday life.  Where Mahler’s other symphonies are now so commonly played and so unthinkingly accepted that they are in danger of losing their meaning, the Seventh remains stubbornly resistant to easy assimilation.  A century after its creation it continues to puzzle, delight and frustrate in equal measure, and remains enigmatic, complicated and problematic - just like life, in fact.




Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Scheherazade



  1. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship
  2. The Kalendar Prince
  3. The Young Prince and the Young Princess
  4. Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman
Duration: 15'
Publisher: Public Domain
KSO performed: 2013, 1994


In the wake of Glinka came a generation of Russian composers who redefined what Russian music was. The most revolutionary of them was the group of five composers led by Mily Balakirev, who became known as “the Mighty Handful”, or simply, “the Five”. In the 1860s this group of mostly amateur composers - Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Borodin and Cui - developed a new aesthetic which celebrated the distinctive sounds of Russian folk-music and rejected what they saw as the overly Western European influenced teaching prevalent in the Conservatoires. Of the “Five”, Rimsky-Korsakov was probably the most accomplished. He was the only one other than Balakirev himself who made a living as a composer.

In 1871 he became a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire.  Given the group’s hostility to the musical establishment, this naturally caused some fiction.  By this stage however the group had largely drifted apart.  Musorgsky died that year from alcoholism, while Cui developed a career as a critic and Borodin concentrated on his main career as a research chemist, working intermittently on an opera, Prince Igor, that remained incomplete at his death.  

In the 1870s and 80s Rimsky-Korsakov’s music evolved from the experimental style he had cultivated in the 1860s. His approach to orchestration especially developed from a sparse style to an extraordinary lush and rich one, full of exotic effects, which would prove hugely influential to the next generation, including his greatest pupil Stravinsky.  Two particular foreign influences were Liszt's symphonic poems, and the orchestral music of Berlioz.  From Liszt he learned a more adventurous harmony, and from Berlioz he took a much more adventurous approach to the orchestra. Berlioz’s innovative approach to orchestration was a revelation to many Russian composers of the period, and his Grand Traité d’Instrumentation et d’Orchestration Modernes became required reading.  The flow of ideas between Russia and France would become more and more important through the latter part of the century. The culmination of this cross-fertilisation was the establishment of the Ballets Russes in Paris, whose first season in 1910 featured as its main attraction a ballet danced to Rimsky-Korsakv's orchestral suite Scheherazade.    


Scheherazade represents the height of this period of Rimsky-Korsakov’s output.  It was completed in summer 1888 and first performed in November that year.  It is a tour de force of orchestral writing, so much so that when Rimsky-Korsakov came to write his own manual of orchestration, many of the examples he included were taken from it.


Rimsky-Korsakov’s own programme note for the first performance is remarkable for its refusal to be drawn into the specifics of the suite’s programme: “The Sultan Schariar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating tales, told seriatim [i.e. with the conclusion held back until the next night], for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan, consumed with curiosity, postponed from day to day the execution of his wife, and finally repudiated his bloody vow entirely.


“Many wondrous things were related to the Sultan Schariar by the Sultana Scheherazade. For her tales she took verses from the poets and words from the songs of the people, and intermixed the former with the latter.”


He did not intend to portray specific tales, but rather an impression of the variety of folk stories to be found in the 1001 Nights.  In his memoirs, he recalls that his conception of Scheherazade was "an orchestral suite in four movements, closely knit by the community of its themes and motives, yet representing, as it were, a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images and designs of Oriental character."  It was his former pupil; and colleague Anatoly Lyadov who suggested the titles for each of the movements.  Rimsky-Korsakov at first acquiesced with these suggestions and even allowed them to be printed in the score, but later had them removed.  “I meant these hints to direct but slightly the listener's fancy on the path which my own fancy had traveled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of the individual listener," hecrecalled. "All I had desired was that the listener, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders.”  Certain aspects of the music do nevertheless seem to represent particular ideas clearly: the terse opening theme seems to embody the sultan, while the solo violin that follows and recurs throughout the piece stands for Scheherazade herself.  


Whether the opening movement really does represent “the Sea and Sinbad’s Ship” is therefore a matter for the imagination of the listener, although there is a salt-flecked taste to it entirely in keeping with a composer whose younger years had been spent in the Russian Navy.  Likewise, the Tale of the Kalendar Prince (a fakir who turns out to be a nobleman in disguise).  The third movement meanwhile certainly has the feel of a romantic scene, even if it cannot really be tied too tightly to the Tale of Prince Kamar al-Zanna and Princess Budur (“created so much alike that they might be taken for twins”).  

Lyadov’s proposed programme falls apart completely in the final movement, and conflates elements of several tales. Ironically, this perhaps reflects best Rimsky-Korsakov’s intention that Scheherazade be taken as a kaleidoscope of implied stories rather than any specific representation.  One very clear influence on this movement is Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor; Borodin had died only a year before and Rimsky had worked on completing and orchestrating his friend’s unfinished opera prior to composing Scheherazade.  What is clear by the end is that Scheherazade’s story-telling has saved her: in the closing moments we hear the sultan’s theme calmed by the solo violin.