Sibelius and Brahms

Gabriel Fauré (1845 – 1924)

Pavane, Op.50

Gabriel Fauré was one of the most distinguished French composers of his time. A consummate craftsman, endowed with exquisite taste and feeling, he exercised great influence as a teacher, and was admired by his contemporaries and pupils (who included Ravel). As a composer he stuck to an individual path – a refinement of the Romantic idiom, guided by a classical sense of form, and an original harmonic language whose daring is not less for being unobtrusive. He once said to one of his aristocratic patrons, ‘I have pushed back the limits of refinement.’

The dance called the Pavane may have originated in Spain, named after the deportment of the peacock (pavo), or in Italy, named for the town of Padua (padovana). It is a measured, ceremonial, processional dance. Fauré composed his Pavane in 1887 for chorus and orchestra. Count Robert de Montesquiou created a text in the style of Verlaine to go with the music – both composer and author were seeking to create an antique, courtly atmosphere.

The poem is a double duet, in which two pairs of imaginary lovers quarrel and are quickly reconciled, not without exchanging barbed comments. The music consists almost entirely of one suave melody, with a very short middle section, corresponding to the quarrel. Fauré incorporated the Pavane, which is often heard in the optional purely orchestral version, in the entertainment Masques et Bergamasques (1919).

© David Garrett

First Performance:
28 April 1888, Paris.

First WASO Performance:
8 May 1948. Henry Krips, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
7 August 2015. Simone Young, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; two horns and strings.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Violin Concerto

Allegro moderato – Allegro molto
Adagio di molto
Allegro ma non tanto

By his very nature, Sibelius was not the sort of composer one would expect to compose a concerto. The conception of a concerto as a ‘show-off’ work for the soloist was anathema to Sibelius, who increasingly throughout his compositional career sought to employ the purest, most unselfconscious forms of musical expression. And yet for all that reluctance to indulge in merely ‘gestural’ instrumental effects, Sibelius maintained a love of the violin. As a young man he had harboured ambitions of becoming a virtuoso violinist himself, but a comparatively late start to his training, together with a slightly dodgy technique, meant that this wasn’t a viable career option.

But his frustrated ambitions must have been compensated at least in part by his composition in 1903 of his only concerto of any kind, the Violin Concerto, which is now acknowledged alongside the Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky concertos as indisputably one of the greatest ever written. The Violin Concerto demonstrates just how successfully Sibelius managed to adapt the virtuoso vehicle to his own expressive needs. For the listener, the concerto is not so much the demonstration of the fiendish virtuosity which it is for the performer, but rather an organic musical whole in which every note contributes to the overall expressive intent. In other words, its technical demands emerge from its artistic purpose.

Undoubtedly the concerto had been inspired by Willy Burmester, former leader of the Helsinki Orchestra and a long-time admirer of Sibelius’ music. As early as 1902 Burmester had been enquiring by letter as to the concerto’s progress, and he made various offers of technical assistance and advice.

In September 1903 Sibelius sent Burmester a short score, to which Burmester replied, ‘I can only say one thing: Wonderful! Masterly! Only once before have I spoken in such terms to a composer, and that was when Tchaikovsky showed me his concerto.’

But when Sibelius finished the work, his anxiety to arrange a first performance as soon as possible, and Burmester’s unavailability in the short term, meant that Sibelius actually offered the first performance to Viktor Nováček, an unexceptional Helsinki musician, who premiered the work on 8 February 1904 with Sibelius conducting. It was not a success, despite some favourable reviews.

With Burmester still offering to perform the concerto, Sibelius set about revising it, completely rewriting the first movement and also making significant alterations to the slow movement. The new version was completed in June 1905, and again Burmester was passed over as soloist, despite his availability. Instead, the new version was premiered in Berlin by Karel Halíř, with Richard Strauss conducting.

Amidst the general wrangling and bitterness, Burmester vowed never to perform the concerto, while Joseph Joachim, on hearing the Berlin premiere, damned it. Fortunately the Berlin press was rather more enthusiastic than Joachim, but even so, the work didn’t really establish itself in the repertoire until the 1930s, when Jascha Heifetz began to perform it. Since that time it has been regarded as a yardstick by which violinists are measured.

The opening of the concerto is one of the most unmistakable in all music. Over the murmur of muted violins, the soloist enters immediately with an unforgettable, intense and brooding first subject. This Allegro moderato theme is set against a series of fragmentary figures which emerge out of the depths of the cellos and bassoons. Although the movement doesn’t sit well with standard sonata principles (the development and recapitulation are combined, and the cadenza precedes them both), there is a clear organic structure, with the soloist dominating and the rhythm driving on through a series of orchestral climaxes.

The mood of the Adagio is more restrained, but the characteristic intensity remains, as does the poignancy and sense of regret. The finale is a polonaise in all but name, and a bravura showpiece for the soloist. It begins with a stamping figure low down in the timpani and strings and the solo part then shoots up heavenwards, with amazingly difficult passages of thirds, harmonics, arpeggios, double-stops – indeed all the pyrotechnics available to the soloist, but at the same time without any sense of self-indulgence. The wild dance gathers momentum as it proceeds until a series of majestic flourishes from the violin leads to the final, sharp decisive chords from the full orchestra.

Martin Buzacott

Symphony Australia © 1997

First Performance (original version):
8 February 1904, Helsinki. Composer conducting.

Most recent WASO performance:
15 November 2014. Alina Ibragimova, violin. Marko Letonja, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones; timpani and strings.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op.68

Un poco sostenuto – Allegro
Andante sostenuto
Un poco allegretto e grazioso
Adagio – Più andante – Allegro non troppo,
ma con brio

The first symphony was a long time coming, largely as a result of Brahms’ paralysing stage-fright when contemplating genres in which the ‘giants’ – especially Beethoven – had produced their masterpieces. That is not to say that Brahms had not wanted to compose symphonies, and in the early 1850s was persuaded by Robert and Clara Schumann to turn a D minor sonata for two pianos into such a work; the results have not survived. It was at this time, though, that he began making sketches for what would, eventually, become the first movement of the First Symphony. In 1862, Clara Schumann was surprised to receive a package from Brahms containing ‘the first movement of a symphony’. She wrote to Joseph Joachim that it was ‘rather strong … but full of wonderful beauties’ and noted that ‘the themes are treated with a mastery that is becoming more and more characteristic of him’. Despite the enthusiasm of such colleagues, however, the movement (at this stage it was only the Allegro section) remained an unfinished torso for well over a decade. The Symphony was only completed and first performed in 1876 – the same year as the first production of the completed Ring cycle.

Its impact was such that conductor Hans von Bülow only half-jokingly referred to it as Beethoven’s Tenth. It is certainly Beethovenian in scale, and follows the blueprint of such works as Beethoven’s Third, Fifth and Ninth Symphonies in tracing an epic journey from a state of turbulent conflict to one of triumphant resolution. Clara Schumann may have found the ideas in the 1862 sketch ‘strong’, but they were immeasurably strengthened when Brahms added the overwhelming slow introduction where, over the implacable pounding of the timpani, the full orchestra sounds a harmony that threatens to come apart under the force of its internal tension. That tension is not resolved by a contrasting chirpy Allegro: the remainder of the movement continues to depict a compelling, but abstract, drama of musical processes in Brahms’ now fully-formed orchestral sound.

The Andante shows an equally Brahmsian, if completely different, sound world. After the confused alarms of the previous movement, the rhetoric is much more subdued, and the scoring lighter, allowing for brief, sylvan wind solos and passages of lush string writing. But the retreat from the Romantic Sturm und Drang of the previous movement is by no means complete, and the music is occasionally taken over in an impassioned outburst. The closing section of the movement, though, is quietly gleaming, with a violin solo and the soft wind chords with which Brahms often concludes a piece. Brahms scholar Karl Geiringer writes that the Allegretto (not a conventional scherzo) ‘seems to smile through its tears’, though it too has moments of frank emotionalism. Conductor Hermann Levi felt that the inner movements were serenade-like, but as such they provide respite between the two, titanic outer movements.

Following the Beethovenian model meant that Brahms had to create a finale that balanced if not outweighed the opening movement. Brahms’ solution was essentially that of Beethoven in the finale of the Ninth
Symphony – though not, of course, using voices: both begin with seemingly unrelated passages that return to a state of uncertainty and move through various musical fields before discovering the thematic centre of the piece. Brahms begins with a sombre Adagio introduction that, like the first movement’s, features harmony that moves almost painfully from chord to nearby chord. This gives rise to fragmentary, more troubled music, which in turn is interrupted by a long horn melody; this tune had personal significance for Brahms, in that he wrote it out, with some home-made verse, on a card sent to Clara Schumann when they were estranged. It is joined by the trombones (making their first appearance in the work), that suggests a sudden view of a spacious landscape. Only now does Brahms bring in his theme, a piece of pure and simple diatonicism.

Brahms, who never suffered fools, would snap at people who noted the similarity of the theme to Beethoven’s ‘Freude’ tune: ‘Any jackass can see that!’ And of course it may be a Beethovenian tune but its scoring, and the development to which it is subjected, are purely and masterfully Brahmsian.

© Gordon Kerry 2015

First Performance:
4 November 1876, Karlsruhe. Otto Dessoff, conductor.

First WASO Performance:
11 August 1944. Ernest J. Roberts, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance:
21 August 2015. Asher Fisch, conductor.

Instrumentation:
two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and contrabassoon; four horns, two trumpets, three trombones; timpani and strings.