Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
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Classic FM Series
L’après-midi
Thursday 10 November 2016 7.30pm
Friday 11 November 2016 2.30pm
CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune was first performed in 1894 and, due to its sheer originality, is
widely regarded as the first piece of genuinely modern music. The work is based on a poem by Stéphane
Mallarmé in which a faun dreams of two beautiful nymphs and wonders how best to savour the exquisite
memory.
It opens with a languorous, slightly oriental flute theme (the instrument played by the faun in the poem)
over a velvety orchestral texture representing the torpor of the warm day and the faun’s reveries. The music
gradually builds in intensity as the faun’s desires stir in the afternoon heat and the mood becomes in turn
both passionate and playful. Harps, skirling clarinets, muted horns and antique cymbals heighten the
exotic, erotic atmosphere. The opening theme returns in an even more languid guise and again at the very
end as its own ghostly echo.
Anthony Bateman © 2016
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835-1921)
Piano Concerto No.2 in G minor, Op.22
Andante sostenuto / At a sustained walking pace
Allegro scherzando / Fast, playfully
Presto / Very fast
The Piano Concerto in G minor “begins,” it is said, “with Bach and ends with Offenbach.” It is true in a way,
although there is far more to it than that of course.
First movement
Leaving Offenbach aside for the moment, Bach is certainly present in the Andante sostenuto opening bars
where, in a solo fantasia, Saint-Saëns the pianist dramatically recreates the experience of Saint-Saëns the
organist at the Madeleine. Immediately after the first entry of the orchestra, however, he recreates another
experience. While he was at work on the Concerto in the spring of 1868 Gabriel Fauré, a former pupil, came
to him with a recently completed setting of the Tantum ergo for voice and organ. “Give it to me!” said SaintSaëns, “I can make something out of it.” In fact, he made the rest of the first movement out of it,
improvising on Fauré’s solemn melody and integrating it with the fantasia material in a way which the
public didn’t immediately understand but which Liszt certainly appreciated for its originality. In spite of its
debts to others, it is a first movement like no other of its kind.
Second movement
One reason why the audience at the first performance in the Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1868 found the first
movement incoherent is that, having had only three weeks in which to write and rehearse the work, SaintSaëns played it (as he himself confessed) “very badly” and failed to do it justice. The Allegro scherzando, on
the other hand, was an instant success. Based on two delightful tunes – a mercurial study in parallel thirds,
introduced by the soloist in a rhythm gently suggested by the timpani, and a rather more humorous idea
introduced by bassoons and lower strings over a vamped accompaniment on the piano – it is certainly not
lacking in charm.
Third movement
If Saint-Saëns could get away with the Scherzo on insufficient rehearsal, he must have made a real mess of
the Presto last movement. Although it is as stylish and as cheerfully irresponsible as any finale in any of the
Offenbach operettas which were so popular in Paris at the time, it was considered a failure at first. Carried
forward on an irresistible tarantella rhythm and disinclined either to rest or to change the subject more
than briefly, it has since proved to be one of the major attractions in a work of brilliant wit and lasting
popularity.
Gerald Larner © 2016
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897)
Symphony No.3 in F major, Op.90
Allegro con brio / Fast, with vigour
Andante / At walking pace
Poco allegretto / Quite fast
Allegro – un poco sostenuto / Fast – a little sustained
Of Brahms’s four symphonies, the Third is the most concise, the most seemingly self-contradictory, and the
hardest to perform. When unveiled by the Vienna Philharmonic in December 1883, with Hans Richter as
conductor, it was hissed by Wagnerians in the audience but praised so extravagantly by the press that
Brahms was typically embarrassed. Brooding about it more than a month later, he reported that its high
reputation was undeserved and would merely prompt people to expect more of him than his Fourth
Symphony would be able to deliver. That work, when it arrived the following year, was happily no
disappointment at all.
Brahms’s deliberately unenthusiastic attitude to his own music was nothing new. But the somewhat
enigmatic Third Symphony can still be a source of perplexity. Its serene ending – all the movements end
quietly, in fact – can make it an awkward work to programme, the assumption being that audiences like an
evening to finish with a bang. Its argument, moreover, can seem either ponderous or turbulent, just as its
colouring can seem grey or rich in autumn tints. Ambiguity is a feature of many great works, and this
symphony is one of them. Why, for instance, was it once nicknamed Brahms’s Eroica?
First movement
The passionate opening introduces a dramatic first movement whose gentle, dance-like second subject is
transformed during the development into a swirling and tragic symphonic waltz. But even the first
movement’s big opening chords can seem enigmatic, sliding between F major and F minor. Yet in these
chords the entire symphony is encapsulated, its combination of certainty and uncertainty instantly defined.
Only in the finale’s quiet F major ending will the argument much later be wholly resolved. (At this
resolution the soft shimmer of string tone, redolent of the portrayal of magic fire by Wagner, a rival
composer, contributes a nice piquancy to the symphony’s close.) The manuscript shows how sensitively
Brahms adjusted small details to achieve the golden glow that surrounds the orchestration like a halo.
Second movement
The intimate but faintly funereal slow movement is launched by the strains of a wind ensemble which, with
brief echoes from the lower strings, maintains a hesitant, slightly uneasy momentum. Clarinet and bassoon
contribute sighing phrases incorporating a triplet figure which will be heard again in the finale. Only
towards the close of the movement do the violins claim their priority with a new melody and a radiantly
Brahmsian crescendo.
Third movement
The tone is darkened again by the aching, arching cello theme, with its gipsy-like turn, which launches the
third movement, the second of the symphony’s two central intermezzos. With the pulse of a slow, swaying
dance, Brahms’s Poco allegretto forms a minor-key interlude between the major-key meditation of the
previous movement and the minor-key eruption of the finale, whose violence is in no way diminished by the
fact that it starts in a whisper.
Fourth movement
Coming after what can sound like a pair of spectral entr’actes, the tension of this movement is all the more
unexpected and, with its snarling trombones, all the more ferocious. The music swirls through a succession
of themes, but eventually begins to burn itself out, the pace slackening. The flute ascends serenely to a high
F – from the storm clouds of F minor the symphony has reached the safe haven of F major. The first
movement’s opening chords return, shedding their original ambiguity as the music dies away in a tranquil
string tremolo like the fall of autumn leaves.
Conrad Wilson © 2016