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02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:18 PM Page 31 The origins of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in D minor for Two Violins are shrouded in mystery. One of today’s leading Bach scholars, Christoph Wolff, believes that this work dates from Bach’s years in Leipzig, where he lived from 1723 until the end of his life. His is a minority opinion, however, and most musicologists support the idea that it is a product of Bach’s time in Cöthen, where he was employed immediately prior to his move to Leipzig. He was there from December 1717 through May 1723 as Kapellmeister (music director) at the court of the music-loving Prince Leopold of Anhalt. Because Prince Leopold adhered to the Reformed faith, his church services didn’t require elaborate music; that freed up his music director to spend most of his time writing secular instrumental pieces such as sonatas, concertos, and orchestral suites. The D-minor Concerto for Two Violins comes down to us not in full score, but rather in a set of manuscript parts that were written out jointly by Bach, his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, his son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnikol, and his student Johann Ludwig Krebs. Bach later arranged the piece in a version for two harpsichords and strings (BWV 1062), just as he did with many of his Cöthen concertos, to breathe new life into them for performances in Leipzig. Two violinists are equal soloists in this work, often sharing their musical material in close alternation. The opening movement (Vivace) begins with a fugal exposition in the orchestra, to which the solo violins respond (as a team) with a passage in which fluid melodic runs are given a memorable contour by sudden leaps of a tenth. The concerto’s Largo ma non tanto provides a particularly fine example of Bach’s ability to make time seem to stop while the players weave a magical tapestry from threads of poignancy, resignation, and tenderness. Anything would seem an intrusion after such a slow movement, but Bach offers an unusually blustery, even angry, Allegro finale. Concerto in D minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043 Johann Sebastian Bach Born: March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany Died: July 28, 1750, in Leipzig Work composed and premiered: composed ca. 1720, in Cöthen, an independent principality of Anhalt-Cöthen (Germany); premiere unknown New York Philharmonic premiere and most recent performance: premiered, December 10, 1881, Theodore Thomas, conductor, Hermann Brandt, Robert Arnold, soloists; most recently played, October 7, 2011, Alan Gilbert, conductor and soloist, Frank Peter Zimmermann, soloist Estimated duration: ca. 17 minutes Two violinists as equal soloists — Frank Peter Zimmermann and Alan Gilbert performing Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins with the Philharmonic in 2011 FEBRUARY 2017 | 31 02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:18 PM Page 32 Johannes Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, completed in 1858, is a stormy work of tumultuous Romanticism, closely related in its expression to the ideals of the composer’s mentor, Robert Schumann. Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 would be a different kettle of fish altogether when it came into being two decades later. Where the First was hyper-charged in its drama, the Second is Apollonian; it suggests a more serene, warm-hearted landscape, drawing heavily on the dulcet tones of the most richtoned instruments of the orchestra — including, in the slow movement, a solo cello. Where the earlier work had stressed the forcefulness of human passions and the “tragic sentiment of life” that the Romantics found irresistible, the Second Piano Concerto regards the breadth of human emotions from a more knowing remove. It sounds like a work of ripe maturity in a way the earlier piece does not. One might go so far as to view Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 as a sort of symphony for piano and orchestra — a conflation of two of the principal genres that the composer felt still held plenty of creative opportunities for an up-todate Romantic of the late 19tth century. At the head of the score Brahms inscribed a dedication “to his dear friend and teacher Eduard Marxsen.” Both Brahms and his brother had taken piano lessons from Marxsen during their childhood in Hamburg and, recognizing the family’s straitened circumstances, Marxsen never charged them for his services. He broadened his pupil’s perspective on all sorts of things and, after Brahms moved away, continued to keep an eye on the family’s needs. Brahms remained devoted until his teacher died, in late 1887. Earlier that year, he Andante, from Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 83 Johannes Brahms Born: May 7, 1833, in the Free City of Hamburg, which would later become part of the unified Germany Died: April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria Work composed and premiered: sketched in late spring 1878, completed July 7, 1881, at Pressbaum, near Vienna; premiered November 9, 1881, in the Redoutensaal in Budapest, by the orchestra of the National Theatre, Alexander Erkel, conductor, with the composer as soloist New York Philharmonic premiere and most recent performance: premiered, December 9, 1882, Theodore Thomas, conductor, Rafael Joseffy, soloist; most recently played, October 2, 2015, at the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts, Greenvale, New York, Alan Gilbert, conductor, Emanuel Ax, soloist Estimated duration: ca. 12 minutes Alan Gilbert and Emanuel Ax following their 2015 performance of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 32 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC 02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:18 PM Page 33 instructed his publisher: “When the new things appear, you will take care, won’t you?, that Frau Schumann and Ed. Marxsen receive a copy right away!” Few dedications can have given Brahms more pleasure than the one he attached to his Second Piano Concerto. A music lover listening to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor may entertain more than fleeting thoughts about an earlier C-minor Piano Concerto — the brooding, even despairing one that Mozart had composed in 1786. During Mozart’s lifetime, however, it could be played only from manuscript parts. It was not published until 1800, the same year Beethoven brought the first movement of his own C-minor Piano Concerto into reasonably finished form. Beethoven went on record as a great aficionado of the Mozart work. Walking in the company of the pianist-and-composer Johann Baptist Cramer, he came within earshot of an outdoor performance (or perhaps a rehearsal) of Mozart’s C-minor Concerto. He is reputed to have stopped in his tracks, called attention to a particularly beautiful motif, and exclaimed, with a mixture of admiration and despondency, “Cramer, Cramer! We shall never be able to do anything like that!” According to the account relayed by Cramer’s widow, As the theme was repeated and wrought up to the climax Beethoven, swaying his body to and fro, marked the time and in every possible manner manifested a delight rising to enthusiasm. On April 2, 1800, at Vienna’s Burgtheater, Allegro con brio, from Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 Ludwig van Beethoven Born: probably on December 16, 1770 (he was baptized on the 17th), in Bonn, then an independent electorate of Germany Died: March 26, 1827, in Vienna, Austria Work composed and premiered: composed 1796 to 1803; dedicated to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia; premiered April 5, 1803, at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, with the composer as soloist New York Philharmonic premiere and most recent performance: premiered February 1, 1852, Carl Bergmann, conductor, Ernst Hartmann, soloist; most recently played, December 10, 2016, Jiří Bělohlávek, conductor, Kun Woo Paik, soloist Estimated duration: ca. 17 minutes Cadenza: by Beethoven, written out in 1809 Yefim Bronfman performed the complete cycle of Beethoven piano concertos, conducted by Alan Gilbert, in June 2014. FEBRUARY 2017 | 33 02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:19 PM Page 35 Beethoven had undertaken his first benefit concert (in those days, a benefit concert being understood to mean “for the benefit of the composer”). He had planned to unveil his C-minor Piano Concerto on that high-profile occasion but managed to complete only the first movement and a detailed sketch of the second. In the end, the composition of this concerto ended up stretching over a good three and a half years, not counting preliminary sketches, which reached back to 1796 — plus a further year if you count the time it took him to actually write out the piano part, and yet another five beyond that till he wrote down the first-movement cadenza. Neither of these last two was necessary as long as Beethoven was the soloist; he knew how the piece should go, after all. Max Bruch’s G-minor Violin Concerto, to which he owes most of his currency in modern concert life, was a relatively early work, begun tentatively in 1857 but mostly composed between 1864 and 1866, while he was serving as music director at the court in Coblenz. It was premiered in April 1866, with Otto von Königslow as soloist, but Bruch immediately decided to rework it. He accordingly sent his score to the more eminent violinist Joseph Joachim, who responded that he found the piece “very violinistic,” but that didn’t keep him from offering a good deal of specific advice pertaining to both the solo and the orchestral parts. Further emendation ensued, and finally the concerto was unveiled in its definitive form in Bremen in January 1868. Some years later Bruch wrote to his publisher: Allegro energico, from Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 Max Bruch Born: January 6, 1838, in Cologne, Germany Died: October 2, 1920, in Friedenau, outside Berlin Work composed and premiered: 1864–66, drawing on material produced as early as 1857; revised in 1867; premiered April 24, 1866, in Coblenz, with the composer conducting and Otto von Königslow as soloist; in its revised version on January 5, 1868, in Bremen, with Joseph Joachim as soloist and Karl Martin Rheinthaler conducting New York Philharmonic premiere and most recent performance: premiered February 3, 1872, Carl Bergmann, conductor, Pablo de Sarasate, soloist; the performance marked the U.S. Premiere; most recently played November 1, 2016, Pablo Heras-Casado, conductor, Frank Huang, soloist Estimated duration: ca. 7 minutes Alan Gilbert conducts one of Joshua Bell’s numerous Philharmonic appearances. FEBRUARY 2017 | 35 02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:19 PM Page 36 Between 1864 and 1868 I rewrote my concerto at least a half dozen times, and conferred with x violinists before it took the final form in which it is universally famous and played everywhere. The concerto soon it made its way into the repertoires of other leading violinists of the day, including Ferdinand David (who had premiered Mendelssohn’s E-minor Violin Concerto), Henri Vieuxtemps, and Leopold Auer, who not only performed the work himself but also championed it among such of his students as Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist, and Jascha Heifetz. Bruch was inherently conservative, and it was accordingly his fate to remain in the shadow of Brahms, who was five years his elder. It is hard to mistake the similarity between the openings of the third movements of Bruch’s G-minor and Brahms’s D-major Violin Concertos, and it is only fair to point out “Morgen!” (“Tomorrow”) Op. 27, No. 4 Richard Strauss Born: June 11, 1864, in Munich, Bavaria, Germany Died: September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany “Marietta’s Lied,” from Die Tote Stadt, Op. 12 Erich Korngold Born: May 29, 1897, in Brno, Moravia (then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) Died: November 29, 1957, in Hollywood, California Works composed and premiered: “Morgen!” composed May 21, 1894; orchestration by the composer completed September 20, 1897; orchestral version premiered on November 21, 1897, in Brussels, Belgium, by the orchestra of the Concerts Populaires, with the composer conducting, Pauline de Ahna, soprano. “Marietta’s Lied,” composed 1916–20; premiered December 4, 1920, at the Hamburg Stadttheater, Egon Pollak conductor, with Annie Münchow as Marietta, and at the Theater in der Glockengasse in Cologne, Otto Klemperer, conductor, with soprano Johanna Geisler as Marietta New York Philharmonic premieres and most recent performances: “Morgen!”premiered November 19, 1912, Josef Stransky, conductor, Frances Aida, soprano; most recently performed, April 21, 2015, in Paris, Alan Gilbert, conductor, Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano. “Marietta’s Lied” premiered January 1, 1963, Andre Kostelanetz, conductor, Beverly Sills, soprano; most recently performed, December 31, 1976, Andre Kostelanetz, conductor, Carol Neblett, soprano Estimated durations: “Morgen!” ca. 4 minutes; “Marietta’s Lied,” ca. 5 minutes Renée Fleming and Alan Gilbert on September 16, 2009, his inaugural performance as Music Director 36 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC 02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:19 PM Page 37 that Bruch’s preceded Brahms’s by a full decade. Joachim would premiere that work, too, but when he was asked to characterize the four most famous German concertos in his repertoire — by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bruch, and Brahms — he insisted that Bruch’s was “the richest and the most seductive.” Richard Strauss’s more than 200 Lieder weave a nearly continuous strand through his life, interrupted by a single 12-year hiatus between 1906 and 1918. His first composition, as a child of six, was a Christmas carol; he died at the age of 85, leaving his supernal Four Last Songs as a valedictory statement and one final song — “Malven” — to be rediscovered and performed as recently as 1984, 36 years after his death. Nearly all of them were conceived as classic Lieder — that is, for solo singer with piano accompaniment. But Strauss lived in an age when the “orchestral Lied” was emerging as a viable genre, nowhere more vividly than in the works of Gustav Mahler. It seemed natural for a composer with so rich a palette as Strauss to expand his piano parts into orchestral scores, especially since he was more accomplished as a conductor than as a pianist. In some cases Strauss orchestrated his songs immediately upon completing their piano versions or even composed both versions simultaneously. In other cases he returned to orchestrate a song years after it had been composed. “Morgen!” sets a rapturous love poem by John Henry Mackay, who was born in Scotland but raised in Germany. In Strauss’s poignant setting, the singer remains mute until well into the piece, as if lost in reverie. She joins in midthought: “And tomorrow the sun will shine again.” The true melody of this song is never presented in its entirety by the singer. In turning it into an orchestral song, Strauss emphasized its nostalgic atmosphere by drawing on the sweet tones of a solo violin to enunciate the theme — an irresistible choice, if perhaps an obvious one. Strauss published “Morgen!” along with three further songs, and he presented the set of four to his bride, the soprano Pauline de Ahna, as a wedding present — a practical one, since as husband and wife they would perform them often in recital. Erich Korngold was one of history’s most extraordinary child prodigies. He was born into a musical family: his father, Julius Korngold, was a music critic who succeeded the esteemed Eduard Hanslick (Brahms’s friend) on the staff of Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse. Music came naturally to him. His mother, asked when her son began playing the piano, replied, “Erich always played the piano.” He never pursued a performing career, but people who heard him play remarked on how he seemed almost organically connected to the keyboard. In 1906 Gustav Mahler declared the nineyear-old boy a genius and recommended that he be put under the care of Alexander von Zemlinsky. Korngold’s music soon had composers all over Europe gaping in awe. In 1934 the theatrical director Max Reinhardt invited him to Hollywood to compose the sound track for his film adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was a fateful and fortunate invitation. During this later phase of his career Korngold would create masterful symphonic scores for 22 motion pictures, earning Academy Awards for Anthony Adverse and The Adventures of Robin Hood. He completed his final original film scene, for Deception, in 1947, at the age of 50, saying that the year was a turning point “if I don’t want to be a Hollywood composer the rest of my life.” His opera Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) harks back to his earlier days. It received simultaneous premieres in two cities — Hamburg and Cologne — on the same day, December 4, 1920. Based on the Symbolist dream-novel Bruges la morte by Georges Rodenbach, rendered into a libretto by the composer and his father, it involves a widower who falls in love with the FEBRUARY 2017 | 37 02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:19 PM Page 38 dancer Marietta, the double of his late wife, Marie; the two women become rivals, at least in his mind. In Act I, he requests that Marietta sing him a song, and she responds with “Glück, das mir verblieb,” which develops into a duet. Often arranged as a solo for soprano, “Marietta’s Lied” is an ode to the joy of love and the transitory reality of life. Antonín Dvořák was on the brink of a major change in his life when he turned 50, on September 8, 1891. The day before his birthday, Jeannette Thurber, who had recruited him to be the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, had cabled her colleagues in America to let them know he was inclined to accept. He served as the conservatory’s director from 1892 through 1895, building its curriculum and faculty, appearing as a guest conductor, and composing such masterworks as his String Quartet in F major (Op. 96, the American), String Quintet in E-flat major (Op. 97), and Symphony No. 9, From the New World, which occupied him during the winter and spring of 1893. Its premiere that December, with Anton Seidl conducting the New York Philharmonic, inspired the critic for the New York Evening Post to proclaim it “the greatest symphonic work ever composed in this country.” The symphony bids us to recall how interested Dvořák was in African American and Native American music. Musicologists have found in its melodies echoes of such American tunes as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Massa Dear.” The principal theme of the Largo movement combines tenderness, nostalgia, and a sense of resolute hopefulness. It sounds like a folk song, but it is Dvořák’s original creation. In 1922 William Arms Fisher, who had been a pupil of Dvořák’s at the National “Goin’ Home,” from the Largo from Symphony No. 9 in E-minor, From the New World, Op. 95 Antonín Dvořák arr. F. Kreisler (adapted T. Batiashvili) Born: September 8, 1841, in Nelahozeves, near Kralupy, Bohemia (now Czech Republic) Died: May 1, 1904, in Prague, Bohemia Work composed and premiered: composed, December 1892–spring 1893; premiered, December 15, 1893, with Anton Seidl conducting the New York Philharmonic in a “public rehearsal”; the official premiere took place the following evening at Carnegie Hall (then called simply the Music Hall). Most recent New York Philharmonic performance: Largo, most recently performed January 21, 2017, Joshua Gersen, conductor Estimated duration: ca. 5 minutes Lisa Batiashvili and Alan Gilbert backstage at David Geffen Hall in September 2016 38 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC 02-23 Gilbert Bday.qxp_Layout 1 2/16/17 12:19 PM Page 39 Conservatory, crafted “dialect words” to fit the tune: “Goin’ home, goin’ home / I’m a’goin’ home / Quiet-like, some still day / I’m a’goin’ home.” An enthusiast for Dvořák’s ideas about melding authentic American songs with the techniques of classical composition, Fisher made numerous concert settings of African American pieces, which he published in 1926 as Seventy Negro Spirituals. This helped confuse the issue, but the fact is that “Goin’ Home,” which had already been published four years earlier as a stand-alone song, is strictly a “pseudo-spiritual.” The legendary violinist Fritz Kreisler arranged the piece as a solo for his instrument, by 1924 at the latest (since he first recorded it that March); he presented it under the title “Negro Spiritual Melody.” That version is heard in this performance, as adapted by Tamas Batiashvili, the father of our soloist. In the spring of 1928 George Gershwin took his fifth trip to Europe — along with his sister, Frances; his brother, Ira; and Ira’s wife, Leonore — and it was there that he worked on his tone poem An American in Paris. Gershwin therefore was an actual American in Paris for part of the time that he labored over the score, and Ira reported that the entire “blues” section was composed in the Hotel Majestic in that city. Other parts, however, were written in New York City (where he had sketched a good deal of the piece before he set sail), in Vienna, and (after his return from abroad) at a farm in Connecticut; and all of the orchestration was carried out in the United States. By that time, Gershwin was driven by a desire to be more than “just” a composer of musical comedies. He asked Maurice Ravel if he might study with him, but the French composer politely declined, insisting that Gershwin’s talent was already perfectly formed and that he would have nothing to contribute. A similar response came from Nadia Boulanger. Gershwin was left to his own devices, forced to clear his own path toward a distinctive fusion of popular and classical styles on the concert stage. The Brooklyn Eagle reported of the premiere of An American in Paris that the listeners responded “with a demonstration of enthusiasm impressively genuine in contrast to the conventional applause which new music, good and bad, ordinarily arouses.” An American in Paris George Gershwin Born: September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York Died: July 11, 1937, in Hollywood, California Work composed: 1928 World premiere: December 13, 1928, by the New York Philharmonic, Walter Damrosch, conductor Most recent New York Philharmonic performance: April 22, 2014, Alan Gilbert, conductor Estimated duration: ca. 19 minutes Another American in Paris — Alan Gilbert studies a score during the Orchestra’s stop in that cityt on his first European Tour with the Philharmonic in 2010. FEBRUARY 2017 | 39