Symphony No. 25 in G Minor, K. 183
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
b. Salzburg, Austria / January 27, 1756
d. Vienna, Austria / December 5, 1791
This bold, impressive work is Mozart’s first important symphony, as well as the earliest of his symphonies that receives regular concert performances. The 17-year-old composer completed it on October 5, 1773, five months after returning to his native Salzburg from the last of his three trips to Italy. He wasn’t happy to be back in a town that he considered backward and unappreciative of his talents. His feelings may be reflected in this dark, turbulent music. So too some of the music he had heard on his journeys, including the operas of Gluck and certain of Joseph Haydn’s intense symphonies in minor keys. This symphony – one of only two that he set in the minor, with its overtones of pathos – rejects the conventional cheerfulness that the listeners of the day expected in a symphony.
After its pulsing beginning (which served as a memorable accompaniment to the opening title sequence in the film Amadeus), the first movement mingles drama with pathos. The following slow section offers a measure of consolation, but is still not totally free of unresolved tensions. The Minuet is a serious and sober affair, framing a trio section, scored for woodwinds alone, which offers a brief oasis of amiability. In the Finale, the first subject resumes the opening movement’s sense of struggle. But Mozart offers a ray of warmth in his second theme. Its presence isn’t enough to win the day, but it does help smooth away the roughest edges of the music’s bleakness.
Violin Concerto in D Major
Igor Stravinsky
b. Oranienbaum, Russia / June 17, 1882
d. New York, N.Y. / April 6, 1971
In 1931, publisher Willy Strecker suggested that Stravinsky compose a Violin Concerto for Strecker’s friend, the young American soloist Samuel Dushkin. At first, Stravinsky hesitated. He felt that his lack of experience at writing for the violin as a solo instrument (with only The Soldier’s Tale of 1918 so far to his credit) might prove an obstacle. He consulted his friend and fellow composer, Paul Hindemith. He helped both allay Stravinsky’s fears, and stimulate his imagination, by advising him that what Stravinsky saw as a liability might actually help him to write a new and different sort of violin concerto.
Furthermore, once Stravinsky and Dushkin had met, they discovered that they had a great deal in common, personally as well as professionally. Any remaining doubts evaporated from the composer’s mind. He wrote the Concerto between May and September 1931, consulting Dushkin where necessary on points of technique. Stravinsky conducted the premiere, with Dushkin as soloist, in Berlin that October.
The Concerto displays a lean, angular, Neo-Classical style and is cast in four concise movements. The first and last are vigorous, highly and intricately rhythmic, and filled with dry humor. In between come two Arias, the second even more lyrical and relaxed than the first.
Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82
Jean Sibelius
b. Hämeenlinna, Finland / December 8, 1865
d. Järvenpää, Finland / September 20, 1957
Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony underwent the longest, most difficult gestation of all his works. He began composing it during the late summer of 1914, with the goal of having it premiered as the centerpiece of a concert to be given in Helsinki as part of the gala celebrations honoring his fiftieth birthday. He made slow progress, writing in his diary, “It is as if God the Father had thrown down mosaic pieces from heaven’s floor and asked me to put them back as they were.”
Nevertheless, the premiere, which he conducted himself, took place as planned on December 8, 1915. What the audience heard was much different from the work as it is known today. Sibelius authority Robert Layton has written that “listening to the 1915 version is rather like experiencing Hamlet in a dream. There are some familiar signposts and fragments of the familiar lines but in the wrong places and spoken by strange voices: the image is somehow blurred and confused.” (The original version is available on BIS records, CD-800.)
Listeners reacted favorably to the new piece, but the composer, who had completed it in some haste in order to meet the deadline, did not. The following year he produced a revised version because, as he wrote, he wished to “give my new symphony a different, more human form. More earthy, more vibrant.” The principal alteration was to compress its four movements into three. He achieved this by joining together the thematically linked opening pair.
Still not satisfied after hearing it, his plans for additional revisions had to wait until after a period of political turmoil brought about by the revolution in neighboring Russia, and Finland’s declaration of independence. He produced the definitive version in the autumn of 1919. This involved the alteration, reordering and condensation of numerous local details in all three movements. Everything, at last, seemed natural, cohesive, inevitable.
The Fifth ranks with the Second as Sibelius’ two most popular symphonies. Although they are much different in detail, they share an epic quality, a sweep and grandeur that triumphs over passing feelings of anxiety to celebrate the heroic, optimistic power of life. He achieves a striking richness of sound with a normal-size orchestra, in sharp contrast to the gigantic ensembles called for by such contemporaries as Strauss, Mahler and Schoenberg. Critic Neville Cardus commented that “while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails, Sibelius offered the public pure cold water.” The Fifth also offers Sibelius’ response to the modernist tendencies of Schoenberg, Stravinsky and others. Although it is unusually structured, in essence it is a traditionally expressive and emotionally satisfying symphonic work.
The very opening is rich with atmosphere: quiet, dreamy, like a forest before break of day. The music’s thematic fragments coalesce as the piece unfolds. Eventually a grandiose climax ushers in the brightly animated, scherzo-like second half of the movement. The following movement is a set of variations, as much on the opening rhythm as on any theme. Much of it is lightness personified; only occasionally do clouds darken the sky.
The Finale begins with little volume but much scurrying activity. The second theme is a noble melody introduced on the horns. Musicologist Sir Donald Tovey compared it to Norse god Thor swinging his hammer, but in Sibelius’ diary, in an entry dated April 21, 1915, he revealed that it represents a specific image: “Today at ten to eleven I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon. Their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo…A low-pitched refrain reminiscent of a small child crying. Nature mysticism and life’s angst! The Fifth Symphony’s finale-theme: legato in the trumpets!” After much energy is expended, the “swan” theme rides a torrent of sound to crown the symphony. Six mighty, broadly spaced chords (the bane of over-anxious or inattentive listeners) set the seal.
© 2007 Don Anderson. All rights reserved.
