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Symphonic poem: "Les Preludes"
Franz Liszt (1811-86)
The 1840s saw Liszt's career as a concert
pianist reach its peak. He was greeted with adulation
everywhere. During a visit in 1847 to Kiev he met Princess
Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. The Princess tried to get
her brother, the Tsar of Russia, to grant her a divorce,
but when this was refused, she set up home with Liszt.
She persuaded him to give up his life of touring and
concentrate more on composition. As a result, Liszt
took up the post of Kapellmeister at Weimar and over
the next 12 years composed many of the works for which
he is best known.
Many composers have written 'Symphonic Poems', but it
was Liszt who invented the term to describe works that
were of a symphonic scale, but were not truly symphonies
as they were based on literary rather than more abstract
ideas. Liszt composed a total of thirteen Symphonic
Poems. The first twelve date from his period at Weimar
and are all dedicated to Princess Carolyne. The best
known of these is "Les Préludes", composed
in 1848 and then revised between 1852 and 1854. Its
popularity has been assured by its use in a number of
film scores, perhaps most famously the 1940 serial "Flash
Gordon Conquers the Universe"! It started life
as an introduction to an unpublished choral work "Les
Quatres Eléments" based on a text by the
poet Joseph Autran. It was only while putting the finishing
touches to the work that Liszt decided to turn the introduction
into a separate piece. He decided to use "Les Préludes",
a poem by Alphonse de Lamartine, as a programme for
the new work and the score is prefaced by a quote from
Lamartine's poem : "What is our life but a series
of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn
note is death?" The work opens quietly before the
two main themes are introduced - one dramatic, the other
more lyrical. It develops through a series of contrasting
moods before reaching its powerful conclusion.
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Violin concerto no.2
Béla Bartók (1881-1945) (Soloist - Thomas
Bowes)
1. Allegro non troppo
2. Andante tranquillo
3. Allegro molto
Béla Bartók was born in
Nagyszentmiklos in Hungary (now part of Romania). His
father was the director of the local agricultural college
and a keen amateur musician. His mother played the piano
and gave Bartók his first piano lessons. His
father died in 1888 and the family moved to Nagyszöllös
where his mother took up a teaching post. It was here
that Bartók produced his first compositions.
He entered the Budapest Academy of Music in 1899. In
February 1902, he heard the Budapest premiere of Richard
Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and was
so taken with the work that he began to study Strauss's
works, even memorising "Ein Heldenleben".
His enthusiasm for composition returned, resulting in
his nationalistic tone poem "Kossuth" in 1903.
He also started touring abroad as a solo pianist.
In 1905, Bartók began collecting Hungarian folk
music and the following year he and fellow composer
Zoltan Kodály published a collection of 20 folk
songs. Over the next decade, Bartók continued
his travels collecting folk music, while also undertaking
the role of Professor of Piano at the Budapest Academy
of Music. He continued to compose, but his music was
not well received. However, a successful production
of his ballet "The Wooden Horse" in 1917 in
Budapest was followed the next year by a production
of his opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle". The
1920s saw Bartók resume his career as a concert
pianist. In 1934, he was given an appointment at the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences so that he could prepare
his collection of Hungarian folk music for publication.
However, the developing political situation in Hungary
forced him to emigrate to the USA in early 1940. Initially
it was not a happy time - he composed and performed
little and was in poor health. However, a commission
from Serge Kousseviztsky resulting in the great "Concerto
for Orchestra" saw a resurgence in compositional
activity. At the time of his death from leukaemia on
25th September 1945 he was still working on a viola
concerto and a third piano concerto.
The second violin concerto was written as the result
of a commission from Zoltan Székely, leader of
the Hungarian Quartet. Bartók started work on
the concerto in August 1937 but set it aside while he
worked on "Contrasts" for clarinet, violin
and piano. He eventually finished the concerto on New
Year's Eve 1938 and it was first performed on 23rd March
1939 in Amsterdam with Székely as soloist and
Willem Mengelberg conducting the Concertbebouw Orchestra.
Bartók was not present and did not hear the work
performed until five years later when he attended a
performance in New York with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist.
Székely had requested a 'grand' concerto which
would be a worthy successor to those of Beethoven and
Brahms and was less than impressed with Bartók's
initial idea that it should take the form of a simple
set of variations. In spite of Székely's lack
of enthusiasm for this idea, Bartók nevertheless
managed to use the 'variations' approach within the
concerto in both obvious and more obscure guises - the
slow movement consists of a set of variations based
on its opening theme, while the finale is a variation
on some of the material from the first movement.
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Symphony no.1 in C minor opus 68
Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897)
1. Un poco sostenuto
2. Andante sostenuto
3. Un poco allegretto e grazioso
4. Adagio - Più andante - Allegro non troppo,
ma con brio
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg,
the son of a double-bass player in the Hamburg State
Theatre. He studied piano, violin and composition and
following his debut as a pianist in 1848 he began to
make his living by teaching and playing in theatres
and some of Hamburg's more dubious taverns. In 1853
he was introduced to Robert Schumann who, in a famous
article entitled "New Paths" published in
his magazine on 28th October 1853, hailed Brahms as
a genius. Following Schumann's tragic death in 1856,
Brahms took up a number of undemanding posts which left
him plenty of time for composition. In 1862 he visited
Vienna for the first time. He settled there the following
year and was to spend most of the remainder of his life
there.
Brahms's music is full of contradictions. In many ways
he wrote music in the Viennese classical tradition,
but in a novel and forward looking way. Indeed Charles
Rosen was to comment that Brahms "made music out
of the openly expressed regret that he was born too
late". He was certainly destined to inherit Beethoven's
mantle as a symphonist, but was clearly reluctant to
do so. His first symphony was published in 1876 but
it had been twenty years in the making. He spent seven
years on the first movement before setting it aside
and did not return to the work until 1874. Two more
years saw the symphony completed and it was first performed
in Karlsruhe on 6th November 1876.
The first movement is one of great intensity and power.
The scene is set by the dramatic opening with its relentlessly
pounding drum beats. The main Allegro begins suddenly
and is a combination of dark and brooding rhythmic and
melodic ideas. The whole movement has an underlying
air of tension and tragedy, possibly reflecting how
deeply Brahms was affected by the mental breakdown and
troubled final years of his mentor, Schumann. In contrast,
the Andante sostenuto is very reflective in character.
The elegiac conclusion features a radiant violin solo.
The third movement begins with a gentle clarinet melody
which is taken up by the strings. The central trio section
builds to a slightly agitated climax before calm returns
in the form of the opening melody. Tragedy again looms
large in the opening of the finale. The trombone entry
marks the change of key from C minor to C major and
the mood begins to change. The metamorphosis is complete
at the beginning of the Allegro which starts with one
of Brahms's best known themes, a majestic chorale which
later reappears in a central largamente section. The
ideas are developed leading to a triumphant coda which
reaches its climax with a spectacular reappearance of
the horn call from the introduction, this time for full
orchestra. Finally out of the shadow of Beethoven, Brahms
the symphonist had arrived.
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