Brahms and Prokofiev

Concert Notes

Overture to Der Freischütz
– Carl Maria von Weber
Born about November 18, 1786, in Eutin, Germany
Died on June 5, 1826, in London, England

This work was premiered on June 18, 1821, at the Konzerthaus in Berlin, Germany. It is scored for pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.

Although the name of Carl Maria von Weber seldom arises in discussions of musical innovators, he is the undoubted father of German Romantic opera. In other words, it was upon his foundation that later German operatic developments were built, making Weber the enabler of Wagner’s earth-shattering music-dramas nearly a half century after the elder composer’s death. Having only ten operas to his credit (and several of them incomplete), Weber’s impact on the music world is even more amazing.

Weber was born into a family of traveling musicians who trekked across Bavaria and presented singspiels (folk operas) to villagers. His education was scant, mostly gained during his family’s brief stops in cities along the road, usually for no longer than three or four months at a time. To his advantage some of these towns offered noted musicians. Perhaps most significant was Michael Haydn in Salzburg with whom young Carl studied when the troupe was stranded there during Napoleon’s campaign of 1797. After six more years of traveling and the composition of three operas, Weber settled in Vienna in 1803, but left after just one year to assume duties as kapellmeister at a theater in Breslau (in modern-day Poland). It seems that his professional life suffered from the same wanderlust that affected his parents, as Weber quickly moved from one job to the next. Between 1804 and 1810, he held three different positions and, after being fired from the last one (a diplomatic position in Stuttgart), resumed his familial vagabond music-making for three more years. He settled in Prague for a time, and then took a position in Dresden – a job that lasted from 1816 until his death in 1826 at just thirty-nine years of age.

In Dresden, Weber’s fame became far-reaching. In 1821 the Dresden Court Opera premiered Weber’s Der Freischütz (The Free-Shooter), which is generally recognized as the seminal German romantic opera. While romanticism, in general, drew upon human emotion as the core of its subject matter, German romanticism often concentrated on supernatural topics. In Der Freischütz, the character of Max must prove himself an able marksman to win the hand of his beloved Agathe. Max’s friend, Caspar, suggests that seven magic bullets will do the trick but, since Caspar has sold his soul to the devil (named Samiel), the plan is doomed. To escape his contract, he must offer another soul in his place. In the end, the same bullet kills Caspar and wounds Agathe. Samiel takes Caspar’s soul and the two lovers are married.

Weber’s overture was the first curtain-raiser to use complete melodies from its opera. After an ominous introduction , a tender melody appears in the horns. Suddenly surging ahead at a molto vivace tempo, the music turns to music from Max’s exclamation of horror when he realizes that he is the victim of a diabolical curse . The largest portion of the overture is drawn from the joyous music from Agathe’s aria expressing her undying love for Max .

Concerto No. 3 in C Major for piano and orchestra, Op. 26,
- Sergei Prokofiev
Born April 23, 1891, in Sontsovka, Ekaterinoslav, Russia
Died March 4, 1953, in Moscow

This work is scored for piano soloist, piccolo, pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion and strings. It was first performed on December 16, 1921, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Frederick Stock. Prokofiev was the piano soloist.

Sergei Prokofiev was a privileged youth. His father managed an estate, earning enough to provide well for his family. His parents were quite involved in his education, serving as his earliest teachers in general subjects as well as in music. However, his almost aristocratic background provided him with French and German governesses to help with foreign language instruction. It is perhaps surprising that the young composer would adopt Bolshevik attitudes to politics in his twenties, stating in his memoirs two decades later that he enthusiastically backed the 1917 Russian Revolution. There is evidence that this support might not have been completely wholehearted, as the composer most certainly penned his recollections with Soviet censors in mind. To further fuel doubts, Prokofiev left the Soviet Union in 1918 and would not return for twenty years.

The first four years of his extended sojourn were spent in the United States. During this period of exile, Prokofiev gave several concerts – both solo recitals and appearances with orchestras – to help fund his trip. He found himself in direct competition with his fellow countryman Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was much more firmly ingrained in the heart and mind of the public as the leading pianist of his day. Prokofiev lamented, “I could not even dream of the overwhelming success [Rachmaninoff] has with his concerts.”

The music-loving president of the International Harvester Corporation, Cyrus McCormick, had met Prokofiev in Russia, and extended an invitation for the composer to visit Chicago. After only meager success with his New York performances, he traveled to the Windy City, where several of his works were performed. His opera The Love for Three Oranges premiered on the stage of the Chicago Opera, as did the Third Piano Concerto at Symphony Hall.

Prokofiev completed the concerto on a vacation to France’s Atlantic Coast in 1921, although the bulk of the work dates from much earlier. He incorporated sketches from as early as 1913, having to compose only two new melodies to fill out the concerto. The premiere on December 16, 1921, was less than enthusiastic, contributing to Prokofiev’s decision to leave America for Europe the following year.

The Third Concerto opens with a flowing clarinet solo, which soon becomes a duet with the addition of the second clarinet . After the rest of the woodwinds come in, the piano enters and transforms the movement into an angular and nervous Allegro, with a central Andante . As the second movement, Prokofiev included a masterful Theme and Variations – a march-like exercise in colorful orchestration and pianistic extremes. The five variations range from sentimental to virtuosic . Prokofiev’s Finale opens with a gentle bassoon theme, abruptly interrupted by what the composer called “the blustering entry of the piano.” The climax of the movement, and of the concerto as a whole, is the dazzling coda with its glorious repeated patterns and sweeping piano glissandi .

Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Opus 98 – Johannes Brahms

Born May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany
Died April 3, 1897 in Vienna, Austria

This work was first performed on October 25, 1885, by the Meiningen Court Orchestra with the composer conducting. It is scored for woodwinds in pairs with added contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, and strings.

In 1853 Robert Schumann lauded the twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms as the “young eagle” among composers. From that moment on, new opportunities presented themselves regularly as demand grew for new works from this fresh new face on the musical scene. His pen flowed with chamber music, piano pieces, choral works, and art songs. However, it was not until 1858 that his first orchestral work, the Serenade No.1, appeared. During the same period, he composed his First Piano Concerto – a flashy virtuosic work far removed from the brooding introspection of Brahms’s later masterpieces. Reception of the First Concerto has been described as ranging from “indifference to revulsion.” The composer had simply not found his musical voice.

This affected the already self-critical Brahms’ confidence profoundly. However, the trepidation he felt was not completely due to self-doubt. After Beethoven’s death in 1827, composers were held to an almost unattainable standard. The shadow cast by his nine symphonies, a monolithic body of work, intimidated many composers, causing some to delay their first efforts in the genre until later in life. Johannes Brahms, although a successful composer in his twenties, did not compose his Symphony No. 1 until he was forty-three. Perhaps he explained it best, “You have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven.” With his confidence bolstered by the success of his first symphony, Brahms composed a second the following year. A third followed five years later in 1883. All of the first three symphonies owe a debt of musical gratitude to Beethoven, as each follow formal examples set forth by the giant.

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony is different. Because of its stern character, certain contemporary critics dismissed it as pedantic. Having the advantage of over a century of retrospect, a fairer assessment would be that the symphony is meticulously crafted with every musical idea calculated to the finest detail. It is also one of the most heavenly statements in music history. The motivic first movement is constructed from a rhythmic germ – short-long – and is cast in the traditional sonata form. This is pure Brahms, with his lovely use of intervals of the third and sixth accompanying nearly every melody . Because of this, each theme seems to be gently cradled by the rest of the ensemble.

The sorrowful second movement is a perfect example of how Brahms could make even a major key sound dark and brooding . Mournful and moving, this is the movement Richard Strauss described as a “funeral procession moving across moonlit heights.” Brahms’ third-movement scherzo is a rapid-tempo respite from the introspection of the second movement . Listen for the metallic interjections of the triangle and its sparkling contrast to the brooding textures .

The finale is perhaps Brahms’ most supreme masterpiece of orchestral composition. Set in the form of a passacaglia (a Baroque form consisting of a repeated melodic pattern upon which melodic and harmonic variations are anchored), Brahms looks backward instead of forward. The creative process is laid bare before our eyes and ears, and we can follow the composer’s thought processes very closely. The movement opens with a harmonized statement of the passacaglia theme , which Brahms borrowed from J. S. Bach’s Cantata 150. Many respected scholars have speculated on Brahms’ intention, and possible meanings for such borrowing. However, we cannot forget that he composed this movement in the bicentennial year of Bach’s birth. Despite its meaning, the movement progresses through more than thirty variations that flow organically from one to the next. Despite this almost mechanical approach, the music is a transcendent and supremely emotional “mighty assertion of the spirit of man.”