Pinchas Zukerman Plays Brahms

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Pinchas Zukerman, conductor and violin
Amanda Forsyth, cello

MALCOLM FORSYTH
Jubilee Overture

Vital Stats

Composer: born Dec. 8, 1936, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Work composed: 1963, revised 1971; commissioned by and dedicated to the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra, in honor of their 50th anniversary celebration
 
World premiere: Arthur Fiedler led the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra on March 5, 1964 at City Hall in Cape Town, South Africa.

Oregon Symphony premiere: At these concerts

Instrumentation: 3 flutes, (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (one doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, harp and strings

Estimated duration: 10 minutes

“I always have had a sense of responsibility to the audience. … I'm never more happy than when I can be transported by a performer or performance. Everything I've done is with that experience in mind.”

  – Malcolm Forsyth

“I am in a never-ending state of surprise to observe how the piece has stood the test of time these 47 years,” Canadian composer Malcolm Forsyth has said of his Jubilee Overture, which he composed while still an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town in his native South Africa. Forsyth describes this youthful work as a festival overture in the tradition of Brahms, Glazunov and Shostakovich and says his then-lack of experience posed his greatest compositional challenge. “I used models and pastiche as my guide,” Forsyth explained.

Forsyth’s composing career began in 1962, when the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra performed his Overture Erewhon. Following on Erewhon’s success, the orchestra invited Forsyth to write another overture to celebrate the symphony’s 50th anniversary. When writing Jubilee, Forsyth “lovingly catered to” the brass section, of which he was a member, and the brass section is prominently featured in the overture’s opening fanfare. In 1971, Forsyth revised the overture, cutting what he described as “a lot of dreary repetition.” He went on to explain that he also shortened the original opening fanfare because “as a brass player I had indulged myself beyond what was reasonable.” However, Forsyth’s original orchestration remains intact.

Arthur Fiedler, who conducted the premiere, did not encourage Forsyth’s compositional aspirations, and after Forsyth completed the overture, he said, “I entered a period of grave doubt and some despair about my future as a composer, after which I set about finding a true, personal voice in my writing.” Fiedler’s negative response seems to have been a nonetheless positive impetus for Forsyth to continue writing and especially to “find a true, personal voice,” one which incorporates elements of South African and North American folk music. Forsyth emigrated to Canada in 1968 and has since become one of Canada’s foremost composers, a winner of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and a recipient of the Order of Canada.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21

Vital Stats

Composer: Born Dec. 16, 1770, Bonn; died Mar. 26, 1827, Vienna

Work composed: 1799-1800; dedicated to Baron Gottfried van Swieten

World premiere: Beethoven conducted the first performance on Apr. 2, 1800, at Vienna’s Hofburgtheater.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Feb. 13, 1901, with Charles L. Brown conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performance: Jan. 9, 2005, with Christoph Campestrini conducting

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings

Estimated duration: 25 minutes

Beethoven’s first symphony is a musical snapshot of the composer at age 29: self-confident, comfortable working within the established musical and societal parameters of his time but not yet the iconoclastic Romantic personality he later became. The fiery temper, disheveled clothing and rude behavior (not to mention the hearing loss) that later characterized Beethoven were not yet a part of his persona.

In 1800, Beethoven still had his way to make in the high-pressure world of musical Vienna. At that time, Beethoven’s reputation was as an excellent pianist who played for the most select aristocratic audiences. His skill as a performer also brought him many pupils, and his connections among the aristocracy and other important leaders in Vienna assured him entry into the most desirable strata of society. At this point in his life, however, Beethoven had had yet to make an indelible name for himself as a composer, even though he had been publishing his own music for the past five years.

In the 1790s, Beethoven briefly studied composition with Haydn. He later claimed to have learned nothing from his teacher, however, and their teacher-pupil relationship was strained and uncomfortable. Beethoven’s music from this period shows Haydn’s influence, but this likely came from Beethoven’s study of Haydn’s music, rather than from anything directly taught him by the older composer.

The audience who attended the premiere of Beethoven’s first symphony would have heard a seemingly typical symphony of the Classical period: four movements scored for a standard Classical orchestra of strings, timpani, trumpets and pairs of woodwinds. The forms of each movement also emulate those of a Mozart or Haydn symphony: a fast first movement in traditional sonata-allegro form, a slower and freer second, a so-called “minuet” (although even in this early symphony we can hear the beginnings of a true Beethovenian scherzo lurking beneath) and an exuberant, up-tempo finale. However, Beethoven abandons convention at the outset, by opening the first movement with a chord that resolves to the “wrong” key, F major (instead of the C major indicated in the score).

Beethoven was roundly criticized for this shocking beginning but responded in typical Beethovenian fashion by using the same opening in an even more deliberate way in his very next work, the overture to his ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus. Aside from the unconventional opening, however, critical reception was generally favorable, and the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung praised its “considerable art, novelty and ... wealth of ideas.”

JOHANNES BRAHMS
Concerto for Violin and Cello in A minor, Op. 102

Vital Stats

Composer: Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg; died Apr. 7, 1897, Vienna

Work composed: Brahms wrote his Double Concerto in the summer of 1887 for violinist Joseph Joachim and cellist Robert Hausmann. Brahms dedicated the work to Joachim with the inscription, “To him for whom it was written.”

World premiere: Joachim and Hausmann performed in a private concert in Baden-Baden on Sept. 23, 1887, with Brahms conducting; all three men also gave the first public performance on Oct. 18, 1887, in Cologne.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Mar. 24, 1958, with Theodore Bloomfield conducting; Eudice Shapiro, violin; and Victor Gottlieb, cello

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances: Apr. 13-15, 1997, with James DePreist conducting; Michael Foxman, violin; and Nathaniel Rosen, cello

Instrumentation: Solo violin, solo cello, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings

Estimated duration: 31 minutes

“I have had the amusing idea of writing a concerto for violin and cello. … If it is at all successful, it might give us some fun,” wrote Johannes Brahms to Clara Schumann in the summer of 1887. Despite this seeming lightheartedness, Brahms decision to write a concerto for violin and cello actually arose from a painful loss: his strained friendship with his longtime colleague, violinist Joseph Joachim, with whom Brahms had not spoken for seven years. When Joachim divorced his wife Amalie in 1880, Brahms sided with Amalie, testifying on her behalf in court, and Joachim was understandably hurt by his friend’s actions.

It is safe to say that without Joachim, Brahms’ life, both musically and personally, would have been vastly different and likely far less renowned. The two men met in Hanover in 1853, and it was Joachim who introduced Brahms to Robert Schumann. Joachim also facilitated the first meeting between Brahms and Franz Liszt, another important musical influence. Joachim is best known as a violinist and violin teacher, but he was also a well-regarded conductor and composer. It was Joachim who gave the premiere of Brahms’ Violin Concerto (Brahms consulted with Joachim on certain technical aspects of violin playing during the course of its composition), and he also conducted the premiere of Brahms’ first piano concerto, among other works.

Brahms felt the loss of Joachim’s friendship keenly and through this concerto sought to regain his favor. After the public premiere in Cologne, Brahms told a friend, “Now I know what it is that’s been missing in my life for the past few years … it was the sound of Joachim’s violin.” Brahms’ reasons for including a solo cello are less clear. He may have been interested in the musical possibilities of pairing violin and cello in a concerto format. Brahms also admired Robert Hausmann, and had previously written him a cello sonata. Adding a cello solo provided Brahms another opportunity to showcase Hausmann’s virtuosity.

Critics did not warm to the work; even Brahms’ long-time champion Eduard Hanslick described the concerto as “tedious and wearisome, a really senile production … I do not know of a less important work of our good friend,” and Clara wrote in her journal, “I do not believe the concerto has any future … nowhere has it the warmth and freshness which are so often found in his works.” Musically, the concerto breaks no new ground, but that was not Brahms’ intent here. Instead, the concerto’s signature Brahmsian melodies and grand sweeping phrases pay affectionate homage to a cherished longtime friend.

© 2010 Elizabeth Schwartz

Program Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz

Elizabeth Schwartz is a Portland-based free-lance writer, researcher and musician. In addition annotating programs for the Oregon Symphony and other ensembles, she has also contributed to NPR’s Performance Today (now heard on American Public Media). Schwartz also co-hosts The Portland Yiddish Hour, heard at 10 a.m. Sundays on KBOO 90.7 FM. Email: schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com.

Recommended Recordings by Michael Parsons

Beethoven: Symphony No. 1
Pinchas Zukerman-National Arts Centre Orchestra 
CBC 5201 
OR
Karl Bohm-Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Deutsche Grammophon 439681  OR
Bernard Haitink-London Symphony Orchestra
LSO Live 90

Brahms: Double Concerto
Mstislav Rostropovich-Cello
David Oistrakh-Violin
George Szell-Cleveland Orchestra
EMI Classics 66954 
OR
Daniel Muller-Schott: Cello
Julia Fischer-Violin
Yakov Kreizberg-Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Pentatone 5186066

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