Subscription Concert B Series

Subscription Concert No.965 B Series

This concert is over. Date: Thu. 12. January 2023 19:00 (18:00)

Venue: Suntory Hall Venue Info Seat

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Kazuhiro KOIZUMI, Conductor

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Program

Schönberg: Verklärte Nacht, op.4

Program Notes
Brahms (arr. by Schönberg): Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, op.25 (Orchestral version)

Program Notes

Schoenberg:Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), op.4

Arnold Schoenberg: Born in Vienna, September 13, 1874; died in Los Angeles, July 13, 1951

　Drenched in romanticism and hyperemotional expressivity, Schoenbergʼs tone poem Transfigured Night is, after more than a century, still his most popular work. It is the direct descendent of Wagnerʼs opera Tristan und Isolde, both in its musical language and its subject matter. And if you want to be technical about such matters, it is actually nineteenth-century music as well, composed in the penultimate year of the nineteenth century (1899).
　Transfigured Night was Schoenbergʼs first major score, and his first mature music. He originally wrote it as a sextet for two violins, two violas, and two cellos. Most of the work was done in a three-week period during the summer of 1899; numerous small details were adjusted over the next few months, and the score was in its final form by December 1. The first performance was given by the Rosé Quartet and two additional musicians in Vienna on March 18, 1902. In 1917, Schoenberg expanded the scoring for string orchestra, in which form he himself conducted the first performance in Vienna two years later. Then, in 1943, he revised the string orchestra version into the form we usually hear it today by moderating some of the performance directions and pruning some of the more densely scored passages. Most listeners agree that the fuller sonorities of a string orchestra heighten the emotional intensity of the music.
　Transfigured Night is one of the very few examples of chamber music to incorporate programmatic elements. Schoenbergʼs score is a musical depiction of a poem of the same title by Richard Dehmel (1863-1920), a leading German poet and playwright of his day. The story involves a pair of lovers walking through the woods in the cold moonlight. The woman has a terrible confession to make: she is with child, but not by him. She had earlier sought emotional fulfillment in sensuality and in childbearing. But this former lover was a stranger, and deceived her. The man she now walks with in the moonlit woods assures her the child will be no burden; his true and deep love for the woman will make the child as his own. A strange radiance fills the night air while the warmth of the coupleʼs love transforms the child from “hers” into “theirs.” The two mortals continue walking in the exalted brightness of the transfigured night.
　The layout of Schoenbergʼs score follows the five stanzas of Dehmelʼs poem, though there is no formal division into separate sections. Three passages of “walking music” (the first and third sections are relatively brief; the fifth is more extended) alternate with “speaking music” (second section for the woman as she explains her plight, fourth section for the man as he assures her he will accept the child as his own). Listeners will have no difficulty in identifying each appearance of the “walking music,” heard initially in the opening moments of the score as a gravely plodding, descending figure. In addition to the “walking” motif, Schoenberg introduces, develops, fragments, combines and recombines numerous other melodic ideas in a process of continuous transformation he learned from Wagner and Liszt.
　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.

　

Brahms (arr.by Schoenberg): Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, op. 25 (Orchestral version)

Ⅰ Allegro
Ⅱ Intermezzo: Allegro ma non troppo
Ⅲ Andante con moto
Ⅳ Rondo alla zingarese: Presto

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

　So indelibly has Arnold Schoenberg become identified in the public consciousness as a radical, an innovator, and a revolutionary, that to associate him with a basically conservative composer like Brahms seems downright incongruous. Yet, upon some consideration, we find that such a meeting of these two musical minds is not so improbable after all, but in fact a continuation of the grand tradition of Austro-German music extending from Bach through Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, Brahms and Richard Strauss. Schoenberg further believed that Brahms was no conservative, and wrote an essay in 1933, which he published in revised form in 1947 as “Brahms the Progressive,” noting such forward-looking aspects in his music as the extensive use of variation procedures, metrical asymmetry, unity achieved through development of motivic fragments, and lack of tonality in certain passages – all characteristics found extensively in Schoenbergʼs own music.
　Schoenberg orchestrated Brahmsʼs G-minor Piano Quartet during the spring and summer of 1937 while living in America. The first performance took place on May 7, 1938 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Otto Klemperer.
　Schoenberg was indeed a master orchestrator, but his belief that he had transcribed Brahmsʼs sound for the orchestra, and that he had held true to his intention “to remain strictly within the style of Brahms and not go further than he himself would have gone” can be discredited. For one thing, Schoenbergʼs orchestration includes a number of instruments Brahms never used: English horn, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, glockenspiel, and xylophone. Woodwinds are employed in threes, whereas Brahms used only pairs. (The opening bars, for instance, are scored for E-flat, B-flat and bass clarinet in octaves.) Other instruments are used more generously than Brahms was wont to, particularly piccolo, trombones, cymbals and triangle. Schoenberg gives trumpets and horns melodic lines of a kind Brahms would never have written, since the latter composer steadfastly wrote only for the natural, valve-less instruments with their true, open notes restricted to those of the harmonic series.
　In a Brahms orchestral work, one is never aware of a sense of virtuosity at play. But in Schoenbergʼs transcription, virtuosity is apparent throughout; one almost could dub the G-minor Piano Quartet a “Concerto for Orchestra.” His transcription is a veritable tour de force of orchestral mastery that dazzles with a brilliance Brahms never dreamed of, especially in the exuberant, gypsy-inspired finale. Schoenberg was justly proud of his achievement, and liked to think of the result as Brahmsʼs Fifth Symphony.
　“Expansive” is a word often invoked to describe the first movement. It contains a wealth of thematic, motivic and rhythmic ideas, all welded into a musical structure and unified by the four-note motif that opens the work. The grandeur of the spacious opening subject (spread out over twenty measures and containing two distinct ideas in itself) is counterpoised with the soaring lyricism of the second in D minor, initially heard in the cellos, then in the violins, then woodwinds. One of the oft-remarked peculiarities of this movement is that although it is technically in G minor, a surprisingly large portion lies in the contrasting tonality of D major/minor – nearly 75%. “The movement is never untroubled,” writes Brahms scholar Malcolm MacDonald, “continually questioning its own premises; and no comforting answer is found, for the coda, beginning hopefully with sweet tranquillo writing for strings alone, blazes up in a passion only to gutter out quietly in implied frustration.”
　Brahms had originally intended to call the second movement a Scherzo but decided that Intermezzo would be more appropriate, rightly so in view of its moderate tempo, subdued nature, wistful tone and veiled colors. The central Trio in A-flat major is more animated and sports brighter colors while retaining the characteristic rhythmic pattern of the Intermezzo (short-long-short-long-long).
　The emotional heart of the Quartet is the magnificent slow movement, written in the “heroic” key of E-flat major. Long-arching melodic lines, a warmly romantic atmosphere and rich sonorities of almost orchestral proportions are features of this movement. The mood is interrupted by a march-like section in C major (traditionally a “military” key) full of “rumbustious good spirits” and which “works up to a climax that cries out for trumpets and drums” (MacDonald) − which is precisely what Schoenberg used here in his orchestration.
　The rondo-finale “in the gypsy style” incorporates four themes into an all-out maelstrom of untamed energy and virtuosic effects, complete with a cadenza (originally for piano, now for clarinet) and a coda replete with dazzling pyrotechnical displays.
　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.
　

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