Program Notes
February 15 & 16, 2015
Symphony No. 36 in C Major, K. 425, "Linz"
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(b. 1756, Salzburg, Austria, d. 1791, Vienna, Austria)
Having fled the restraints of the Salzburg court and his domineering father in 1781 and
established himself as a freelance musician in Vienna, Mozart further outraged his parent the
following year by marrying Constanze Weber, youngest daughter of the Weber family whom
Leopold Mozart despised as fortune hunters out to snare his genius son. In the summer of
1783, Wolfgang traveled to Salzburg with his bride hoping to reconcile his family, but the
three-month visit was awkward for all concerned and healed no wounds. In late October,
he was undoubtedly delighted to return to Vienna, stopping en route at the city of Linz on
the Danube — now best-known as the birthplace of Adolf Hitler and the luscious raspberry
pastry Linzertorte.
There, on October 30, he was welcomed by Count Thun, one of Austria's most powerful
nobles, and entreated to stay awhile at the Thun castle. The count lost no time asking
Mozart to present one of his symphonies at the court, and since the composer had none in
his luggage, he decided to create one on the spot. But since the concert was scheduled for
November 4th, he had barely five days to accomplish this feat!
The result was the symphony now known as the "Linz," one of Mozart's finest symphonic
works, so inventive and beautifully crafted that its short gestation seems unbelievable.
This is music written to compliment a noble court, and Mozart sets it in C major, a
key he associated with lofty ceremony. It is a key in which the valveless trumpets of
the day sounded particularly well, and so two trumpets and timpani enrich the Linz's
marvelous scoring.
For the first time in his symphonic career, Mozart begins his first movement with a slow
introduction, a device his colleague Haydn used often in his symphonies. This music
combines grandeur — the impressive fanfare opening — with mystery — the winding,
harmonically ambiguous lines for strings and woodwinds that follow; both will be important
elements throughout the movement and indeed the entire work. Then, the main Allegro
section begins, with a surprisingly hushed, even shy launching of what soon becomes bold,
assertive music. Instead of a lyrical second theme, Mozart emphasizes the boldness with
a melody of hammering chords in the unexpected key of E minor. The winding lines from
the introduction form the substance of the development section in this movement perfectly
balanced between relaxation and energy, introversion and extroversion.
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Unusually for this period, Mozart chose to retain the trumpets and drums for the Andante
slow movement, another sonata form in F major. But he used them with great discretion,
adding nobility and subtle drama to this otherwise string-dominated and very melodious
music. The gently lilting rhythm suggests the Italian pastoral style known as the siciliano.
Stealthy upward-creeping scales and pungent dissonance color a development section that
is both beautiful and spooky.
Back in C major, the third movement returns to the minuet's origins as a stately court
dance. Its delicate middle or trio section also hews to tradition by featuring prominent
woodwind parts for solo oboe and bassoon.
The finale — at the Presto tempo Mozart designated as "play as fast as possible" — balances
soft-dynamic graciousness with forte energy. Here, as in movements one and two, Mozart
uses sonata form, concocting another brief but brilliant development section. Seizing on a
little downward-zigzagging figure — a theme Michael Steinberg colorfully describes as "like
lightening in slow motion" — he tosses it from instrument to instrument in faux-counterpoint.
With a grand, sweeping bow to the court, the symphony closes as it began with a fanfare.
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Ralph Vaughan Williams
(b. 1872, Down Ampney, England; d. 1958, London)
Related to both Charles Darwin and Josiah Wedgewood, founder of the famous pottery
firm, Ralph Vaughan Williams was the scion of a prominent English family that expected its
sons to be lawyers and clergymen, not musicians. His own path to a composing career was
unconventional, and he was almost 38 when he unveiled his first masterpiece, the Fantasia
on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
Vaughan Williams spent his thirties collecting folk songs from all parts of England. In 1904,
he undertook another project that also influenced his creative development: the revision of
the hymnal of the Anglican Church, making it, in his words, "a thesaurus of all the finest hymn
tunes in the world." During this two-year labor of love, he immersed himself in the music of
such Elizabethan masters as William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Thomas Tallis. For the hymn text "When, rising from the bed of death," he chose a stately melody
composed by Tallis in 1567. It obviously made a deep impression, for in 1910 it became the
theme of his Fantasia for strings composed for the Three Choirs Festival held in Gloucester
Cathedral. Vaughan Williams scored the work for three string ensembles: a large first
orchestra, a small second orchestra of nine players, and a string quartet. With them, he
created layers of contrasting sonorities that played off the cathedral's vast echoing spaces.
The quartet's first violinist and violist are also featured in luminous solos and duets. At the
work's premiere on September 6, 1910, listeners were too involved in the other piece on the
program, Elgar's recent oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, to pay much attention. But within
a few years, the Fantasia was being played by orchestras throughout Europe.
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It begins with a preview of the theme plucked by low strings, followed by a short winding
idea in violas and cellos that will also play a prominent role. Then we hear the Tallis theme
played in its entirety by second violins, violas, and cellos. This melody will not return in full
until the solo violin sings it near the end. The body of the piece is composed of meditations
on phrases of the theme, new melodies spun from it, and the richly harmonized winding
idea, all refracted by the different prisms of Vaughan Williams' three ensembles.
Although the Fantasia is not specifically religious music, it seems to speak to the spirit. As
Fuller Maitland, a reviewer of its first performance, wrote: "The work is wonderful because it
seems to lift one into some unknown region of musical thought and feeling. Throughout its
course, one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new."
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, opus 23
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(b. 1840, Votkinsk, Russia; d. 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia)
If one had to pick one work that epitomizes the Romantic piano concerto, it would have
to be Tchaikovsky's First. Written in 1874–75, it was the first Russian piano concerto to
enter the standard concert repertoire, and it has remained perhaps the most popular
concerto ever written. Even Rachmaninoff's celebrated piano concertos were closely
modeled on it.
But the first person to hear it pronounced it a failure. This was Nikolai Rubinstein, renowned
pianist and conductor, founder of the Moscow Conservatory, and usually Tchaikovsky's
staunch friend and supporter. Not being a concert pianist himself, Tchaikovsky had brought
the concerto to Rubinstein on Christmas Eve, 1874 for advice as to how to make the solo
part most effective. This is how the composer remembered the occasion:
"I played the first movement. Not a single word, not a single comment! ... I summoned all
my patience and played through to the end. Still silence. I stood up and asked, 'Well?' "
"Then a torrent poured forth from Nikolai Gregorievich's mouth. ... My concerto, it turned
out, was worthless and unplayable — passages so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written
as to be beyond rescue — the music itself was bad, vulgar — here and there I had stolen
from other composers — only two or three pages were worth preserving — the rest must
be thrown out or completely rewritten. ... This was censure, indiscriminate, and deliberately
designed to hurt me to the quick. ... 'I shall not alter a single note,' I replied. 'I shall publish
the work exactly as it stands!' And this I did."
Although this episode threw Tchaikovsky into a deep depression, he still had energy and
faith enough in his work to submit the concerto to Hans von Bülow, a German pianistconductor as famous as Rubinstein, who was looking for a new showpiece for his upcoming
American tour. Von Bülow took on the work with enthusiasm and played its world premiere
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on October 25, 1875 in Boston. The Bostonians gave it a tumultuous reception, and the
First Piano Concerto never looked back.
This is a concerto in which gorgeous, inventive orchestral writing meets one of the great
virtuoso piano parts of the repertoire. And it is enriched by a cornucopia of marvelous
Tchaikovsky melodies, the first of which forms the introduction to movement one. Launched
by Tchaikovsky's beloved horns, it sweeps grandly through the orchestra. The pianist
serves at first as the orchestra's accompanist, but he makes his presence strongly felt with
massive chords ringing from bottom to top of the keyboard. This big Romantic opening
eventually fades, and a melody that most composers would kill for is gone, never to return.
In the first of several dramatic mood shifts, the pianist now attacks a quick, skittish
tune, based on a Ukrainian folksong, which is the movement's true principal theme. The
tempo eventually eases, and in another shift, clarinets introduce a new melody, lovely
and rather melancholy, which gives the pianist opportunity to show his poetic side. After
the middle development section, this melancholy theme appears again, now soaring
rhapsodically. Movement two rocks gently on a poignant, lullaby-like theme, introduced by the flute.
Sparkling, high-speed music fills the movement's middle section. Its rollicking tune,
introduced by the violins, is from a French song popular in Russia at the time, "Il faut
s'amuser, danser et rire" ("One should enjoy oneself, dance and laugh"). This was a favorite
of the Belgian singer Désirée Artôt, the only woman Tchaikovsky ever fell in love with.
The spirited rondo finale features a dashing refrain theme whose emphatic rhythms stress
the second beat of each measure. It alternates with a rapturous waltz melody, introduced
by the violins. A broad concluding coda energetically combines these themes, with the
waltz ultimately dominating. And now comes one of the most famous of all virtuoso piano
passages: a stupendous flight of fast double-fisted octaves sweeping up and down the
keyboard. This leads to a grand apotheosis of the waltz, before the pianist and orchestra
urge each other on to a blazing finish.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2014.
RSO program notes are also available online at rso.com/notes .
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