TMSO Special 2020（12/17） │ Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra

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Artists

Kazuhiro KOIZUMI, Conductor
Gerhard OPPITZ, Piano

Kazuhiro KOIZUMI (Honorary Conductor for Life)

Kazuhiro Koizumi studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and at Universität der Künste Berlin. After winning the 1st prize at Karajan International Conducting Competition in 1973, he has appeared with Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, among others. Currently, he serves as Honorary Conductor for Life of TMSO, Music Director of Kyushu Symphony, Honorary Music Director of Nagoya Philharmonic, and Special Guest Conductor of Kanagawa Philharmonic.

Gerhard OPPITZ (Piano)

The German pianist, Gerhard Oppitz has carried on the German musical tradition from legendary Wilhelm Kempff. His own career opened up internationally in 1977 when he became the first German to win the coveted Artur Rubinstein Competition.

Gerhard Oppitz has performed with the world’s most prestigious orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and Boston Symphony Orchestra with conductors including Carlo Maria Giulini, Riccardo Muti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Sir Colin Davis and Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Gerhard Oppitz has a wide and diverse repertoire. Performances of piano cycles feature prominently in his concert program: Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann and Grieg. He also has earned a reputation in the performance of contemporary music, particularly in works by Lutoslawski, Ligeti, Veerhoff, Pierre Boulez, Messiaen and Stockhausen.

Gerhard Oppitz' discography comprises over 40 titles. He recorded for RCA Red Seal and released remarkable albums such as the complete solo piano works of Brahms and Grieg, Piano Concertos of Brahms and Weber with Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sir Colin Davis, Beeethoven’s Piano Concertos recorded with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Marek Janowski.

In Japan, NHK broadcasted programs around his performances and masterclasses of Beethoven sonatas, to tie in with a tour he made around the country.

Program

Brahms: Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor, op.15

Program Notes
Beethoven: Symphony No.5 in C minor, op.67

Program Notes

Ⅰ Maestoso
Ⅱ Adagio
Ⅲ Rondo: Allegro non troppo

Johannes Brahms: Born in Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died in Vienna, April 3, 1897

Brahmsʼs First Piano Concerto grew out of his initial attempt, at the age of twenty, to write a symphony. Originally the work was conceived as a four-movement sonata for two pianos, but Brahms declared that “even two pianos are not quite enough for my needs.” So, with the help of his friend Julius Grimm, Brahms tried to turn the sonata into a symphony. His difficulty with the orchestration led to a compromise suggested by Grimm: a piano concerto. The original Maestoso and Adagio movements were retained as the first and second movements of the concerto, and a new rondo-finale was written. Brahms finished the first version of the complete concerto in 1858, and the premiere took place the following year in Hanover with the composer at the piano and his friend Joseph Joachim (the famous violinist) on the podium.

The concerto is among the most grandiose and majestic ever written, and at nearly fifty minutes in length, one of the longest as well. The piano part is prodigiously difficult, though it often becomes closely woven into the orchestral fabric, where it loses its soloistic role. Hans von Bülow called this concerto a “symphony with piano obbligato.” The point was overstated, of course, but the orchestraʼs importance in the concerto far exceeds that of many nineteenth-century concertos, where the orchestra functions as a mere backdrop for a flashy virtuoso soloist. These qualities helped ensure that the concerto would be received with response ranging from cool to outright rejection. From the viewpoint of the twenty-first century, we can nod in silent appreciation when Abraham Veinus writes: “The currents set in motion by Wagner and Liszt governed the last tide that washed upon the modern world. As nineteenth-century music rolled to its denouement, it carried Brahms with it as an aloof and disinterested passenger, regarded by the respectful as a learned iconoclast and by the impatient as a bewhiskered anachronism. The works of Brahms are the tremendous and impassioned utterances of a prophet with no future to predict, with only the splendors of the past to recreate and humbly worship.”

Although Brahmsʼs music evokes images of towering strength and monumentality, it is worth noting that, with the exception of an extra pair of horns, his orchestra for this concerto is no larger than that for Mozartʼs Overture to The Marriage of Figaro or for Beethovenʼs First Symphony, both composed well over half a century earlier: two each of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet and timpani, plus the normal string section.

The opening is one of the most famous in the entire concerto repertory. The arresting impact of thundering timpani and the stormy turbulence of the first theme immediately proclaim the broad symphonic sweep, the dark passion and the elemental grandeur of this movement. In his biography of Brahms, Walter Niemann wrote: “Never before, not even in Beethoven, has any instrumental concerto struck such a wild note of passion and revolt, indeed of demonic terror, as this first movement.” The wonderfully serene, even devotional mood of the Adagio movement provides just the contrast needed for the drama of the first. The finale, a rondo movement, is, like the first, built on a massive scale out of rugged, dramatic materials and sweeping musical lines.
Program notes by Robert Markow

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.

Ⅰ Allegro con brio
Ⅱ Andante con moto
Ⅲ Allegro
Ⅳ Allegro

Ludwig van Beethoven: Born in Bonn, December 16, 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827

Every time Beethovenʼs Fifth, the worldʼs most famous symphony, appears on a program, some voices in the audience will probably be heard muttering, “What, the Fifth again?” Others will use this as an opportunity to reacquaint themselves with a work they know only slightly. And still others, probably the majority, will gladly welcome the Fifth again as an old friend, eager to delve deeper into its mysterious workings, eager for renewed spiritual nourishment, eager to learn what interpretative insights the conductor will bring to the work and to judge the performance against a background of innumerable previous performances, live and recorded, which the listener may already know. “Masterpieces are capable of infinite self-renewal,” as critic Lawrence Gilman used to say. To Robert Schumann, “no matter how frequently heard, whether at home or in the concert hall, this symphony invariably wields its power over men of every age like those great phenomena of nature that fill us with fear and admiration at all times, no matter how frequently we may experience them.”

Beethoven wrote his Fifth Symphony intermittently between 1804 and 1808, with most of the work accomplished in 1807. The first performance took place in Viennaʼs Theater-an-der-Wien on December 22, 1808. Today, more than two hundred years later, and with countless performances behind us, Beethovenʼs Fifth has not lost its power to shock and awe. Concertgoers who believe that music must have a nice tune to be viable need only remind themselves that, although the first movement contains not a single melody, it may well be the most universally recognized piece of classical music ever written. Additional forward-looking elements found in the Fifth include demands for a greater degree of technical proficiency from the musicians than in most any previous symphony, solo material for nearly every instrument, the innovative use of the piccolo, contrabassoon and trombones in purely symphonic music (though they had long been employed in opera orchestras), and the linking of movements in the scherzo-to-finale.

The opening movement consists almost entirely of an intense, concentrated onslaught of a four-note rhythmic cell that unfolds with unparalleled energy and can leave an audience gasping under its emotional impact.

The second movement provides all the melody the first movement lacked. It is in double variation form, meaning that Beethoven alternates two different themes (a favorite device of Haydn, a composer Beethoven adored). The first is the consoling subject presented in the opening measures by violas and cellos, the second is heard initially in clarinets and bassoons in Beethovenʼs familiar militaristic vein.

Beethoven did not call the third movement a scherzo, as he had in some of his previous symphonies, but it is one in all but name with its insistent pulsation in rapid triple meter. The “ta-ta-ta-taaah” motif of the first movement was not absent in the second (it could be heard embedded in the second, militaristic theme), but in the third it returns with a vengeance, blared forth first by the horns, then the full orchestra. The contrast provided by the central trio section could not be greater, the music infused with Rabelesian jollity.

The emotional peak of the symphony arrives in the finale. Traditionally, the finale represented merely a lightweight, festive ending. But in the Fifth, the finale assumes a new role, acquiring the status of triumphal solution, the grand peroration that resolves conflicts and tensions of the preceding movements. Hector Berlioz, always one to respond to innovative genius, is reported to have met his former teacher, the French composer François Lesueur, after a performance, whereupon Lesueur exclaimed: “It moved and excited me so much that my head was reeling. One should not be permitted to write such music.” “Calm yourself,” replied Berlioz; “it will not be done often.”
Program notes by Robert Markow

Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.

Ticket Price

	S	A	B	C	Ex
General	¥7,500	¥6,500	¥5,500	¥4,500	¥3,200

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TMSO Special 2020（12/17）