SYMPHONY No.5 IN D MAJOR
William Boyce (1711-1779)

Composer and organist William Boyce was among the most significant native English composers between Henry Purcell and Edward Elgar. Spanning the period between the end of the Baroque and the emergence of the Classical eras, his music owes more to Handel than to the newer styles emanating from Mannheim and Vienna. As Composer to the Chapel Royal and Master of the King’s Musick, he compiled the three-volume Cathedral Music, containing morning and evening services, anthems, and other church music by over 30 English composers of the previous three centuries – including King Henry VIII. By 1768 Boyce’s increasing deafness forced him to curtail all performing activities.

Boyce’s style straddled the Baroque and Classical periods. He composed in many genres, including for the stage. Among his instrumental works, best known are the eight symphonies. First published in 1760 by Walsh, who was also Handel’s principal publisher, they were titled: Eight symphonies in eight parts, Six for violins, hoboys, or German flutes, and two for violins, French horns and trumpets, with a bass for the violoncello and harpsicord [sic]. Despite the rather pompous title, the music in the anthology is nearly all recycled, taken from overtures to dramatic works that Boyce had composed over the previous 20 years. Apparently Boyce himself compiled them in their final form of three movements each and gave them the then modern title of “Symphony,” although in style they are closer to Baroque suites. Boyce was apparently not fond of slow tempi, and most movements of the eight symphonies consist of varying degrees of allegro.

The music for the Symphony No.5 started life originally as the overture to the ode See Fam’d Apollo, which Boyce composed in 1739 for St. Cecilia’s Day (November 22). This “Handelian” Symphony begins with a fanfare – not inappropriate for a choral work. There follows a short slower transitional passage, leading into a fugue. The subsequent two movements would also have been suitable for a Baroque dance suite. The first is a gavotte,  followed by a minuet; both follow the standard repeat pattern of the dances, although the repeats of each phrase have slightly different orchestration. It must be admitted, however, that trumpets and timpani would never have been used for a minuet in a Baroque dance suite.

PIANO CONCERTO No.5 IN E FLAT MAJOR, Op.73 "EMPEROR"
Ludwig van Beethoven

Of all the large musical forms Beethoven used in his compositions, his concertos are the most traditional, all corresponding to the classical three movement (fast–slow–fast) structure. He did expand the internal form of the individual movements, especially in the Fourth and Fifth Piano Concertos. The dramatic use of the piano in the opening phrases of these concertos was only tried once before–by Mozart in his piano concerto in E flat major, K.271–and did not appear again in any major piano concerto until the B flat major concerto of Brahms. The thunderous opening of the Fifth Concerto was without precedent, as was Beethoven's refusal to allow the performer to improvise a cadenza.

Beethoven composed the concerto in the summer of 1809 in Vienna, under conditions hardly conducive to creative work. Vienna, following a day of heavy bombardment, surrendered to the French army under Napoleon, and those citizen who could afford to flee did so, including Beethoven's patron the Archduke Rudolph. Prices rose, taxes rose, food was scarce, parks were closed to the public and Beethoven was alone and lonely. In spite of these hardships during those trying months, he managed to compose some of his greatest works: the Piano Sonata Op.81a (Les Adieux), the Quartet in E flat, Op.74 and the Emperor Concerto (this title was bestowed on it by one of the publishers, without Beethoven's approval).

The concerto was premiered in Leipzig in 1811 to an enthusiastic reception. It was the only one of Beethoven's Piano Concertos not premiered by the composer himself, since by that time his hearing was too far gone to perform in public, especially with an orchestra. Two months later, the first performance in Vienna was a total failure, primarily because the concerto was on the program of a Charity Society performance featuring three living tableaux on Biblical subjects - hardly a suitable milieu.

The concerto opens with a powerful and assertive orchestral chord, followed by a sweeping cadenza-like flourish by the piano solo. Only after two more orchestral chords interspersed in the piano outbursts, does the orchestra introduce the principal theme. The movement is stormy and propulsive with some of the same harmonic ambiguity as in the first movement of the Fourth Concerto. At the point where traditionally we would have expected a cadenza, the pianist’s score bore Beethoven’s directive: "Do not play a cadenza!" The music that follows, however, has all the characteristics of a cadenza; the composer wanted to be sure that his ideas, and not the performer’s would prevail, including the horn accompaniment that would certainly not have been part of a classical cadenza.

The hymn-like lyrical second movement opens with the muted violins introducing the theme, followed by an aria pianissimo on the piano. There follow two variations, the first on the piano, the second by the orchestra. Then follows one of Beethoven’s most mysterious musical moments, the hushed transition to the exuberant rondo third movement. He builds up immense tension and mystery by subtle changes in key and tempo, until the finale bursts out in its jubilant mood. Now, if you click on the first example in this commentary, you will see how the opening arpeggios of the Concerto return as the beginning of the main theme of the finale.

SYMPHONY No.5 IN B FLAT MAJOR, Op.100
Sergey Prokofiev

Prominent Soviet artists, including Sergey Prokofiev were evacuated from Moscow following the German invasion of Russia in 1941. They were relocated first to the Caucasus and later, when that area became endangered, further east into Central Asia and Siberia. All these wanderings, however, did not hinder Prokofiev from accomplishing a prodigious amount of work: Music for the film Ivan the Terrible and four other films, the opera War and Peace, the Second String Quartet, the Seventh and Eighth Piano Sonatas, the ballet Cinderella, and the Flute Sonata.

With the turn in the fortunes of the war in the winter 1943-44, Prokofiev was able to return to Moscow and immediately set about composing his Symphony No.5, conducting the premiere in Moscow in January 1945. It was a time of national elation as the Soviet Union anticipated the impending victory over Nazi Germany. The composer considered the work a milestone: “I was returning to the symphonic form after a break of sixteen years. The Fifth Symphony is the culmination of an entire period in my work. I conceived it as a symphony on the greatness of the human soul.” Whether this comment represents his true intent or a statement for official consumption we will never know.

Mindful of the Soviet authorities, Prokofiev used in the Symphony the patriotic, “officially-sanctioned” language that he had used in the dramatic works of the late 1930s and early 1940s, such as Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible and War and Peace. His model was Shostakovich’s Symphony No.5, in which traditional symphonic structure, broad dramatic themes and conservative harmonies – the “Soviet reality” demanded by the authorities – still allowed for a strong personal expression.

Prokofiev conducted the premiere of the Symphony in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on January 13, 1945, in what turned out to be his last appearance as a conductor and one of the most dramatic premieres ever. Everybody who was anybody was in the audience. The event is best described in the words of pianist Sviatoslav Richter: “The Great Hall was illuminated, no doubt, as it always was, but when Prokofiev stood up, the light seemed to pour straight down on him from somewhere up above. He stood like a monument on a pedestal. And then, when Prokofiev had taken his place on the podium and silence reigned in the hall, artillery salvos suddenly thundered forth. His baton was raised. He waited, and began only after the cannons had stopped. There was something very significant in this – something symbolic.” The salvo was a tribute to the Red Army which that day crossed the Vistula in its march into Germany. A few days later Prokofiev suffered a fall and concussion never to regain his full health.

Like Shostakovich, Prokofiev’s stock declined in the West during the period of the Cold War, not so much with music directors and the public, but rather in the music academies, where strict atonality and the austere twelve-tone works of Schoenberg and his disciples reigned supreme. The issue was less one of political ideology than musical; the trend setting composers of the West regarded the tonal, melodic style of the Russians passé in the relentless onward progression of “serious” music.

The eminently singable themes of the Fifth Symphony have made it, along with the First, the most popular of Prokofiev’s instrumental works. It is one of the symphonic repertory’s most dazzlingly orchestrated works with wonderful solos, section solos and brilliant percussion writing. As befitted the occasion, the Symphony opens with a grand Andante movement with a sweeping main theme introduced by a solo flute but gradually supported by the timpani and brass. True to convention, the most important secondary theme provides a more flowing, less majestic contrast. The second movement provides a sharp contrast, a Scherzo marked Allegro marcato consisting of two main themes that are passed around the orchestra.   The Trio featuring the upper winds temporarily slows the pace,   but a new theme brings in more lively orchestral solos. The transition back to the Scherzo begins slowly, gradually accelerating and building up momentum.

Like Mozart and his own colleague Shostakovich, Prokofiev was a master of the gut wrenching slow movement. But the Adagio of the Fifth Symphony is not an intimate expression; in its formality it is more funereal, perhaps recalling the millions of Russian fallen. It is in conventional ABA form, the first part a gentle, sinuous extended phrase over pianissimo triplets in the violins with cellos and basses bowed to sound like deep Russian cathedral bells. The second section includes the first instance in this work of typically Russian folk-like themes and builds to a climax marked now more clearly with the sound of the tolling bells. The return to the first theme is varied but recaptures the contemplative mood of the opening.

A quiet reprise, a variation on the opening of the Symphony serves as an introduction to the Finale,   an exultant celebration. Three principal themes are introduced in the upper winds, the clarinet for the first,   the oboe the second  and the flute for the third. A fourth “Russian” theme, closely related to the middle section of the Adagio movement, belongs to the lower strings and becomes an important figure in the climatic conclusion of the Symphony. While the first part of the movement is fairly subdued, it is clear that the composer had deliberately saved the biggest sound for last. The coda alone lasts a full two minutes, a buildup of tension using a gradual crescendo that adds more and more instruments, delayed harmonic resolution and an unexpected final pianissimo – all over an ostinato in the violins and upper winds – leading up to the final “big bang.”

Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn