American violinist Benjamin Beilman joins the APO for a concert in their Great Classics series with an uplifting programme of Romantic repertoire.
The orchestra's Music Director Giordano Bellincampi conducts.
Benjamin Beilman Photo: Benjamin Beilman
WEBER: Overture, from Euryanthe
1821 saw Carl Maria Von Weber a very successful musician, conductor and composer. His recent opera Der Freischütz had been a triumph and he was part way through writing a comic opera when a commission from Vienna arrived for a more serious work.
Euryanthe was premiered in 1823 and was not a hit. The libretto was considered weak and the plot outlandish. Its backside-numbing duration of over four hours probably didn't help.
The overture has remained however and unburdened by the words and unwieldy plot, gives some insight into the musical intent of the opera as a whole.
The libretto of the opera was by Frau Helmina von Chezy - a journalist, poet and playwright well-regarded in literary circles.
Foreshadowing Wagner, an epic of the Middle Ages had been selected as subject matter: Histoire de Gerart de Nevres et de la belle et vertueuse Euryanthe de Savoie, sa mie. Maybe the title length should have been a warning!
Weber’s intention was "to create a work of art as a whole, where all the parts come together harmoniously in total beauty" … again foreshadowing what Wagner would follow with.
BRUCH: Violin Concerto No 1 in G minor Op 26
The great German violinist Joseph Joachim once said: "The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, the most uncompromising, is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive was written by Max Bruch... the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's."
Bruch began his concerto in 1864 as a 26 year old but was unsure of his footing throughout its composition, writing to his former teacher "My violin concerto is progressing slowly – I do not feel sure of my feet on this terrain. Do you think it is very audacious to write a violin concerto?"
The work had one outing in 1866 but was immediately withdrawn from circulation by a dissatisfied Bruch.
It wasn't until 1868 and considerable input from Joseph Joachim that the concerto reached its premiere.
Bruch expressed doubts that it deserved the title concerto instead suggesting fantasy, to which Joachim replied: "The designation concerto is completely apt. Indeed, the second and third movements are too fully developed for a fantasy. The separate sections of the work cohere in a lovely relationship, and yet—and this is the most important thing—there is adequate contrast."
Sadly, on the financial front, Bruch lost out almost entirely with the one work of his catalogue that would've brought him a steady stream of dosh, relentlessly performed as it was.
He must've been in a tight spot as he decided to sell the concerto to a publisher for a flat fee and abandon claims on any royalties earned.
He'd kept the original manuscript however, and with the worthless German currency after WWI decided to sell it in America for much needed income. The manuscript went to the States and a pair of piano-playing sisters Rose and Ottilie Sutro, who were to sell it and pass on the proceeds. For reasons unknown they reneged on the deal, held onto it and Bruch went to his grave in 1920 without a penny for the manuscript.
BACH: Gavotte en rondeau, from Partita for solo violin No 2
A delightful encore from Benjamin Beilman.
BACH arr Anton Webern: Ricercar, from The Musical Offering
The list of Frederick the Great’s achievements and hobbies is enough to make the most efficient multi-tasker quail. Despite being a devastating military leader reshaping the destiny of Europe, and reforming the Prussian state from top to bottom as an "enlightened absolutist", he found time to dabble in music as a talented flutist (also knocking out four symphonies and over a hundred flute sonatas of his own).
In 1747, J S Bach was visiting Frederick’s court to see his son, who had been serving the court as harpsichordist for seven years. Bach senior was given the royal tour by His Majesty during which he performed an improvisation in three parts on the theme given him by the King. So masterful was the composer that Frederick challenged him to expand it to six voices. Bach demurred but a few months later produced the Musical Offering, a work of seventeen movements, the Ricercar being one.
At first glance, it may seem odd that nearly 200 years later Anton Webern of the Second Viennese School (notorious for its battle to "emancipate dissonance") should orchestrate the Ricercar. But, as avant-garde as Webern was, he’d trained as a musicologist and his dissertation was on a collection of early sixteenth-century polyphonic sacred vocal music.
He employs his klangfarbenmelodie or "tone-colour melody" technique as the melodic line flows seamlessly between a variety of instrumental voices.
MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No 5 in D Op 107, Reformation
This is labelled as the composer’s 5th due to the order of publication. If numbered in order of writing, it would be his second.
After an initial enthusiasm and efforts to have the symphony performed, Mendelssohn himself came to label the work as juvenilia and the first movement a "fat bristly animal".
It’s hard to unpick whether his disdain grew from the work’s reception by others or from a self-critical view of its programmatic elements.
Begun in 1829, it gained its nickname Reformation from its inspiration: a public event to be held in Berlin in celebration of the tercentenary of the Augsburg Confession - the document announcing the key pillars of the Lutheran church. Mendelssohn referred to it as his ‘Church Symphony’.
With his usual enthusiasm, and despite a bout of measles, he knocked it out by May 1830. However, the symphony wasn’t played at the event in June, but rather a work by a more conservative composer of the time.
Here the theories swirl - was it passed over because of Mendelssohn’s Jewish heritage? Because of the scale and style of the work? Or was he simply too late in completing it.
Two years later, and an attempt to premiere it in Paris was aborted due to the musicians finding it overly mannered with "too much fugato, too little melody". Finally Mendelssohn conducted its premiere in Berlin in November 1932.
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Town Hall, 20 July 2023
Producer: Tim Dodd
Engineer: Adrian Hollay
