Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Coriolan Overture, Op 62
Allegro con brio
Like Beethoven's overtures to Egmont, Leonore and The Ruins of Athens, the Coriolan Overture was originally written for the theatre. It was composed in 1807 for a performance, not of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, but of Heinrich von Collin's Coriolan. Collin was a minor official in the Austrian government, and his play appears to have had sufficient merit to enjoy sporadic appearances in Vienna during the early years of the century. Whether his friend Beethoven saw any of these productions, or merely read the play, is unknown. What is certain is that the composer wrote this overture five years after the play's premiere, and that there is only one recorded instance of the overture being presented in connection with a production of the play: at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 24 April 1807.
The historical Coriolanus was a rebellious Roman general who lived in the fifth century BC. According to Plutarch, Coriolanus, during a time of famine, argued that grain should not be distributed to the plebian masses unless they abolished their newly-established Tribune. For this, he and his family were banished from Rome and took refuge among the Volsci - whom Coriolanus eventually aided in their war with the Romans. His mother, Volumnia, and wife, Virgilia, pleaded with him to spare the city of his birth. This he did, but was killed by the Volsci for his treachery.
Coriolanus's frustrated rage, and the conflicts he confronts, are fully explored in the overture, and give rise to some of the most explosive and violent music Beethoven ever wrote. The opening loud chords represent Coriolanus's brash and unbending defiance, and the rising theme which follows, in the significant, tragic key of C minor (the key of the Fifth Symphony), shows his struggle with destiny. In contrast, the plaintive second theme is in the key of E flat major, the heroic key of the Eroica Symphony. Its descending structure and more lyrical quality would seem to represent Volumina as she pleads with her son to spare Rome. The interplay between these two diametrically opposed themes creates a tension that finds its resolution only in Coriolanus's inevitable downfall. Three final fading pizzicato notes mirror the overture's triumphant opening.
© Stephen Strugnell
Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)
Piano Concerto No 1 in G minor, Op 25
Molto allegro con fuoco –
Presto – Molto allegro e vivace
The first of Mendelssohn’s two piano concertos was a work of his early twenties, written hastily in 1831 – in a letter to his father he described it as “a thing quickly thrown off” – and first performed in Munich in October that year. He took the solo part on that occasion, and indeed had devised the work as a vehicle for his own playing. But he dedicated it to a young Munich-based pianist, Delphine von Schauroth, whose playing and person he seems to have found equally attractive.
In form, the Concerto represents a reconciliation between the three-movement classical concerto form of Mozart and Beethoven and the much freer structure of shorter display pieces such as Weber’s Konzertstück for piano and Spohr’s Gesangszene for violin – a union that was to be cemented the following decade in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, and to have a profound influence on the genre throughout the nineteenth century. What Mendelssohn did was take the outline of the classical concerto, but make the three movements roughly equal in length, instead of giving the first movement the lion’s share, and link them into a continuous whole. He also increased the fluidity of the form within each movement, by dispensing with most of the classical concerto’s clear-cut divisions between solo and tutti sections.
For a start, the first movement lacks the long opening tutti of the classical concerto. Instead, the piano muscles in on the in-tempo introduction after a few bars, and takes the lead in presenting the two main themes, respectively assertive and lyrical, of the compact first movement. Horn and trumpet fanfares help make the link to the Andante, an intimate ‘song without words’ in E major with a reduced orchestra (bassoon, horn and lower strings with divided cellos, joined towards the end by flutes and four-part tremolando violins). And more fanfares launch the introduction to the finale, an ebullient major-key rondo based on a melody related to the first theme of the first movement, and including further backward glances shortly before the end.
© Anthony Burton
Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)
Symphony No 9 in C major, D944 ‘The Great’ (1825-6)
Andante – Allegro ma non troppo
Andante con moto
Scherzo: Allegro vivace
There was a time when Schubert’s Great C major symphony, as we have come to call it, was deemed unplayable. Performers were daunted not merely by what Schumann described as its "heavenly lengths," but also by the energy needed to keep the music airborne. Mendelssohn, who conducted its premiere in Leipzig a decade after Schubert’s death, prudently chose to abbreviate it. When he later took it to London, the players, faced with the equestrian string figuration in the finale, shamefully laughed him off the platform, thereby delaying its first British performance for another twelve years. Other orchestras proved equally scornful. Hornists – who in this work are the immediate recipients of one of Schubert’s greatest themes – dismissed it as tuneless.
Yet the Great C major is nothing if not melodious, as well as masterly in its structural sweep. The entire work displays a discernibly progressive approach to symphonic form. The opening horn theme is spacious enough to occupy the whole slow introduction, just as the scherzo’s central trio section consists of a vast single melody, gloriously unfurled.
Out of the first movement's slow introduction springs an emphatically rhythmic, jerky theme, pummelling rather than songlike, followed by a swerve from major to minor for a quieter, more lyrical second subject on the woodwind. The momentum is never disrupted. The use of pianissimo trombones is a famous example of Schubert’s flair for instrumental colouring. From time to time the music explodes with vitality, nowhere more so than in the coda, in quicker tempo, which brings back the opening horn theme in exhilaratingly high relief.
The andante, with its wistful oboe theme, anticipates the trudging pulse of Schubert’s Winterreise cycle. Abrupt trombone chords add an air of impatience and the whole fabric of the movement is later torn apart by the unexpected violence of its climax – an example of what has been called Schubert’s "volcanic temper," a side of the composer only recently identified. After a stunned silence and some hesitant pizzicati, the flow of the music uneasily resumes.
The succeeding scherzo is a Viennese dance on a grand scale, relentless in its spinning energy and stamping rhythms, shot through with wisps of melody that keep getting thrust aside by the ceaseless motion. The finale sustains the momentum, galloping like a ride to the abyss. Not even the serene woodwind theme that forms the second subject provides respite, because the strings keep the rhythm constantly on the boil. A stupendous coda, filled with huge anvil strokes, brings the symphony to a fitting close.
© Conrad Wilson
Begin 2013 in the company of two brilliant and charismatic young artists. David Afkham’s awards, prizes and plaudits make impressive reading: he has captured the attention of musicians and public alike, and makes his SCO debut with a typically ambitious bill. Schubert’s ‘Great C major’ is not for the faint-hearted; for most of the 19th century it was considered unperformable. Now a firmly established favourite, it remains an epic musical journey. Piemontesi returns to the SCO, a pianist as charming as he is formidable.