Jon Kimura Parker Plays Brahms

Carlos Kalmar, conductor
Jon Kimura Parker, piano

JOHANNES BRAHMS
Concerto in D minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 15

Vital Stats

Composer born
May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany

Died
April 3, 1897, Vienna

Work composed
1854 - 1859

World premiere
Joseph Joachim conducted the Orchestra of the Royal Theater in Hanover on Jan. 22, 1859, with Brahms at the piano.

Oregon Symphony premiere
Dec. 16, 1935, with Willem van Hoogstraten conducting; Ignaz Friedman, piano soloist

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances
Jan. 22-24, 2000, with James DePreist conducting; Peter Serkin, piano soloist

Instrumentation
Solo piano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings

Estimated duration
42 minutes

“This work … cannot give pleasure. Save its serious intention, it has nothing to offer but waste, barren dreariness,” wrote a Leipzig music critic about Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor. At its premiere, critics didn’t know what to make of this decidedly non-virtuosic concerto; one wrote, “The work, with all its serious striving, its rejection of triviality, its skilled instrumentation, seemed difficult to understand, even dry, and in parts eminently fatiguing.”

This comment, while hardly a rave review, paled in comparison to the audience’s reaction in Leipzig just five days later. Brahms told his friend and mentor Joseph Joachim: “Nor reaction at all to the first and second movements. At the end, three pairs of hands tried slowly to clap, whereupon a clear hissing from all sides quickly put an end to any such demonstration …”

Why did Leipzig audiences revile this concerto? Leipzig was a musically conservative city, whose tastes had been nurtured and largely defined by Felix Mendelssohn, director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1835 until his death in 1847. Mendelssohn’s programs featured few contemporary works (other than his own), and focused on the classical repertoire of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven; even Robert Schumann’s music was met with skepticism. After Mendelssohn’s death, Leipzigers’ attitudes toward anything new hardened into virtual loathing. Brahms’ concerto lacks the dazzling pianistic flourishes audiences expected of a piano concerto. This, along with its neither-fish-nor-fowl character (in places it seems more symphony than concerto), spelled certain doom for Brahms in Leipzig.

The music that ultimately became Brahms’ first piano concerto went through several iterations as a two-piano sonata and a symphony before Brahms decided on the concerto genre. It is a young man’s composition, and it contains personal revelations of Brahms’ emotions rarely found in his later music, most notably in the opening bars. Joachim explained the stormy opening of the concerto to Brahms’ biographer Max Kalbeck as Brahms’ reaction to his friend Schumann’s mental collapse and attempted suicide; the passion and anguish of the introduction certainly supports this explanation. Another clue to Brahms’ emotional state can be found in the lyrical, contemplative Adagio. In the score at the beginning of the movement, Brahms wrote “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini,” (Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord). This also refers to Schumann, whom Brahms and Joachim often addressed, affectionately, as “Mynheer Domini”). Brahms apparently had Clara Schumann in mind as well when he composed the Adagio. In a letter to her, Brahms described the Adagio as, “a lovely portrait of you.”

BÉLA BARTÓK
Divertimento for Strings

Vital Stats

Composer born
Mar. 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Sînnicolau Mare, Rumania)

Died
Sept. 26, 1945, New York City

Work composed
Bartók wrote the Divertimento between Aug. 2 -17, 1939, at Saanen, Switzerland, on a commission from Swiss conductor Paul Sacher.

World premiere
Paul Sacher led the Basel Chamber Orchestra on June 11, 1940.

Oregon Symphony premiere
Oct. 19, 1964, with Jacques Singer conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances
Jan. 26-27, 1970, with Singer conducting

Instrumentation
String orchestra

Estimated duration
27 minutes

Mozart wrote his opera The Magic Flute, which celebrates love, faithfulness and hope, while he was dying. The music, however, reveals nothing of Mozart’s personal turmoil. In similar fashion, Béla Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings does not (with the exception of the second movement) reflect the circumstances in which Bartók found himself during the summer of 1939, when Europe teetered on the precipice of war. Instead, the Divertimento lives up to its name, although it offers much more than a simple diversion. The two outer movements, in particular, express a more profound sense of joyfulness born of adversity. When the Divertimento was performed at the International Society for Contemporary Music festival in Berkeley, CA, in 1942, one critic noted, “Bartók’s Divertimento might admirably serve as a commentary upon life in Europe in the last five years, but with a paean of faith in humanity as its coda.”

Swiss conductor and patron Paul Sacher could have been Bartók’s inspiration for that “faith in humanity.” Sacher commissioned several works from Bartók, including the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and the String Quartet No. 6. In the summer of 1939, Sacher wrote to Bartók with a request for a new work for Sacher’s ensemble, the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Sacher also offered his chalet to Bartók while he composed, along with a personal chef and a piano shipped in from the city of Berne. This act of generosity moved Bartók, who wrote his son, “Somehow I feel like a musician of the olden time; the invited guest of a patron of the arts. For here I am, as you know, entirely the guest of the Sachers; they see to everything – from a distance. … The furnishings are … the last word in comfort … the work went well, and I finished it in just 15 days…”

By this point in his career, Bartók’s penchant for fusing folk idioms with classical structures was well established. In the Divertimento, however, Bartók’s use of folk elements is less obvious. In the Divertimento, Bartók looks back to the Classical and Baroque periods. The divertimento is a form popularized by Haydn and Mozart. It borrows from the Baroque concerto grosso, in which a larger ensemble alternates musical passages with a soloist or small group of soloists. Bartók also employs the Baroque custom of using dance rhythms to propel his music, although in this case the rhythms feature elements of Hungarian folk music.

A vibrant, primal pulse underlies the series of dance melodies that comprise the Allegro non troppo. The character of these melodies varies widely: some are stout and earthy, others more refined and graceful. It is in the second movement Adagio that Bartók expresses his anguish over the looming threat of war. The music is, by turns, brooding and menacing. As Bartók launches into the final movement, he combines insistent pulsing rhythms with a light-hearted melody first sung by the concertmaster’s solo violin.

FRANZ LISZT
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 1 in F minor (originally written for solo piano; orch. Liszt & Franz Doppler)

Vital Stats

Composer born
Oct. 22, 1811, Doborján, Hungary [now Raiding, Austria]

Died
July 31, 1886, Bayreuth, Germany

Work composed
The piano version was composed between 1851-3 and dedicated to Hans von Bülow. Franz Doppler orchestrated this rhapsody, along with five others, between 1857-60, with later alterations by Liszt. The orchestral versions were published by Schuberth & Co. in Leipzig in 1874-5.

World premiere
Undocumented

Oregon Symphony premiere
Dec. 5, 1932, with Willem van Hoogstraten conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performance
Dec. 5, 1937, with van Hoogstraten conducting

Instrumentation
Piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, harp and strings

Estimated duration
11 minutes

“Liszt could never keep his hands off his own works,” wrote musicologist Jay Rosenblatt. The same can also be said of Liszt’s attitude to many other composers’ works, given the sheer number of piano transcriptions Liszt made of music by many of the 19th century’s greatest composers.

In the case of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, tracing Liszt’s involvement is a complex exercise. He wrote the first 15 for solo piano between 1851 and 1853; 11 of these were based on material from Liszt’s Hungarian gypsy music collections. At some point after the piano versions were completed, Liszt began making orchestral transcriptions of some of them. In addition, Liszt’s student, Franz Doppler, also transcribed six of the Rhapsodies for orchestra (to make matters more confusing, Doppler renumbered them in the process; tonight’s selection, No. 1 of Doppler’s arrangements, was No. 14 in its original piano version).

When Doppler sent Liszt his transcriptions of the Hungarian Rhapsodies, Liszt could not resist tinkering with them still further. In particular, he was interested in bringing out as much of the gypsy flavor of the melodies as possible, even to approximating the sound of gypsy instruments such as the cimbalom (hammered dulcimer). Liszt also arranged the orchestral transcriptions for four-hand piano, and again he could not refrain from making still more, albeit minor, changes.

The Rhapsody No. 1 in F minor is a colorful assortment. It includes a funeral march, a lengthy majestic section and vibrant gypsy-style melodies, complete with instrumental flourishes. “The rhapsodies – particularly the Hungarian ones – are perfect creations of their kind,” wrote Bartók. “The material that Liszt uses in them could not be treated with greater artistry and beauty.”

© Elizabeth Schwartz 2009

Program Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz

Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer and musician based in the Portland area. She is the program annotator for the Oregon Symphony, the Cascade Festival of Music, and has also contributed to NPR’s Performance Today, (now heard on American Public Media). Ms. Schwartz holds a B.A. in music from the University of California and an M.M. from Boston University. She can be contacted at schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com.

Recommended Recordings by Michael Parsons

Brahms-Piano Concerto #1
Emil Gilels-Piano
Eugen Jochum-Berlin Philharmonic
Deutsche Grammophon 447446  OR
Nelson Freire-Piano
Riccardo Chailly-Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig
Decca 475763

Bartok-Divertimento for String Orchestra
Pierre Boulez-Chicago Symphony
Deutsche Grammophon 445825  OR
Stanislaw Skrowaczewski-Saarbrucken Radio Symphony
Oehms 306

Liszt-Hungarian Rhapsody #1
Antal Dorati-London Symphony Orchestra
Mercury Living Presence 432015

These selected recordings are available at Classical Millennium, located at 3144 E. Burnside in Portland.