Program Notes: November 4, 2007
Written by Todd Wetherwax & compiled by Josh Cohen

Folk music has been a source of inspiration for composers for several centuries. The composers represented in this program, Haydn, Brahms, and Kabalevsky, each used popular or folk music from Eastern Europe as sources of melody, harmony, and rhythm.

After the Revolution of 1848, folk music became an important part of the cultural identity of the various European ethnic groups, including areas of Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and the region now known as the Czech and Slovak republics. Composers took pride in their nationalist feelings, even to the point of composing opera in languages other than the traditional Italian and French. From the middle of the 19th century composers including Brahms, Dvořák, Janáček, Bartok, Kodály, and Hindemith began to systematically collect, study, and preserve the music of Eastern European ethnic groups. Russian school composers beginning in the 19th century with Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakoff, and continuing into the 20th century with Stravinksy, Prokovieff, Kabalevsky, Shostakovich, Khachaturian and others used elements of folk music from Russian, Armenian, gypsy, and other sources in their compositions. American composers (McDowell, Gershwin, Copland, Bernstein) also draw heavily on traditional American sources such as the Negro Spiritual and Jazz to create a musical idiom that is distinctly American.

Haydn Symphony #96 “The Miracle”

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) is remembered today as the father of the string quartet and the symphony. Haydn was exposed to Hungarian and gypsy music as a young child living in the Austrian village of Rohrau, near the Hungarian border. He also spent much of his career working for the Esterházy family in Hungary. He began his career as a Vienna Choir boy (he sang at the funeral of Antonio Vivaldi) and ended more than 60 years later as the composition teacher of a rather headstrong young Beethoven. Haydn’s astonishing volume of work includes all genres: sacred music, opera and dramatic works, symphonies, piano sonatas, string quartets, works for wind ensemble, and numerous pieces of chamber music.

Invited by the English violinist and impresario Johann Peter Salomon, Haydn made two trips to London, in 1791-92 and 1794-9, which were artistic and financial successes. The Symphony #96 was probably the “Grand New Overture, Haydn” that opened the concert season on March 11, 1791. According to a contemporary description of the event, the curious audience left their seats and crowded to the front of the hall in order to get a better view of the composer. The seats in the middle and rear had barely emptied when the great chandelier crashed down. No one was hurt, and several persons let out loud cries of ‘Miracle! Miracle!’ The name ‘Miracle’ has been associated with this piece since that performance. All twelve of Haydn’s ‘London’ symphonies were so popular that they were arranged by Salomon and others (including Clementi) and sold as chamber music (string quartet/quintet or trios for violin, cello, and piano).

Unlike modern concerts, the ordering of the Salomon concerts consisted of an opening symphony or overture (not by the ‘featured’ composer), followed by other vocal and/or instrumental movements. Haydn’s symphony was reserved for the second part of the program, by which time the latecomers had finally arrived. After the symphony there were additional vocal/instrumental pieces and the concert concluded with a ‘Full Piece’ or ‘Finale.’ Evidently concerts of such length were not unusual. In a concert given in Vienna on December 22, 1808 by Beethoven, the program consisted of the 5th and 6th symphonies, the 4th piano concerto, and the Choral Fantasy. Imagine going to a concert today and having two, three, or more major works of Mahler, Bruckner, or Richard Strauss on the same program!

Haydn’s symphony begins with a slow and stately introduction (adagio), followed by an allegro (fast) that takes as the main theme three short notes followed by a long note. Beethoven used this same rhythm in his 5th symphony. Haydn, however, does not treat the theme in the same way as Beethoven. We feel that perhaps we are in an expensive fine china shop rather than on the parade ground.

The second movement is a theme and variations. As with much of Haydn’s music, the composer presents a simple, but elegant, theme and weaves back and forth through many keys and timbres. After a stormy middle section in d minor, Haydn returns to the main theme in major and features the flute, oboe and violin with solo material.

The third movement (Minuet & Trio) contrasts a stylized version of the courtly minuet with the trio in a peasant style. After using many of the cliché’s of ‘refined’ court music in the minuet, Haydn presents a Ländler (Austrian folk dance) with an oboe solo accompanied by an “oom-pa-pa” in the strings.

In the finale (vivace), Haydn returns to his light and delicate style using a folk type melody. As with many of his other works, Haydn plays little games with the musicians by avoiding entrances or repeats where they would seem predictable. As with the allegro of the opening movement, Haydn starts with the strings playing softly with occasional outbursts of forte. The development section modulates to a stormy minor section before returning to the main theme in the correct key with the flute and bassoon as soloists. The audience thinks that the symphony is coming to a conclusion with a boisterous tutti, when suddenly there is a hold. After the winds restate the main theme, the orchestra joins in for a short tutti coda.

 

Brahms Hungarian Dances #1, 3 & 10

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) first became acquainted with folk and gypsy music while touring as a nineteen year old piano virtuoso with the Hungarian violinist Eduard Reményi in April and May of 1853. On this tour, Brahms met the violinist Joseph Joaquim, for whom Brahms later composed his Violin Concerto. Brahms eventually composed 21 dances based on Hungarian melodies. These works proved very popular as well as profitable for the young composer, and publications were issued for piano 4-hands, solo piano, and full orchestra (No. 1, 3, and 10). The dances for orchestra were published in 1874 without any opus number designation. Other orchestrations were prepared from this collection by Antonín Dvořák, including the famous Hungarian Dance #5. Joaquim also made arrangements of a number of the Hungarian Dances for violin and piano.

The dances are generally in an A-B-A form with the B section being in a contrasting style. Elements of melancholy (use of minor key), dramatic changes of mood, tempo, rhythm, and orchestration are easily heard. Brahms possibly considered this set of dances as orchestration exercises in preparation of his first symphony, which appeared two years later.


 

Kabalevsky Piano Concerto #3

Dmitri Borisovich Kabalevsky (Russian: Дмитрий Борисович Кабалевский) (December 30, 1904 – February 18, 1987) was a Russian Soviet composer.

Kabalevsky is regarded as one of the great modern composers of children's music. He helped to set up the Union of Soviet Composers in Moscow and remained one of its leading figures.

Kabalevsky was born in Saint Petersburg. His father was a mathematician and encouraged him to study mathematics; however, in early life he maintained a fascination with the arts, and became an accomplished young pianist, also dabbling in poetry and painting. In 1925, against his father's wishes, he accepted a place at the Moscow Conservatory, studying composition under Nikolai Myaskovsky and piano with A.B. Goldenweiser. In the same year he joined PROKULL (Production Collective of Student Composers), a student group affiliated with Moscow Conservatory aimed at bridging the gap between the modernism of the ACM and the utilitarian "agitprop" music of the RAPM. He became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory in 1932.

During World War II, he wrote many patriotic songs, having joined the Communist Party in 1940, and was the editor of Sovetskaya Muzyka for its special six-volume publishing run during the war. He also composed and performed many pieces for silent movies and some theater music.

In general, Kabalevsky was not as adventurous as his contemporaries in terms of harmony and preferred a more conventional diatonicism, interlaced with chromaticism and major-minor interplay. Unlike fellow composer Sergei Prokofiev, he embraced the ideas of socialist realism, and his post-war works have been characterized "popular, bland, and successful," though this judgment is attributed to many other composers of the time, and some of Kabalevsky's best-known "youth works" date from this era (the Violin Concerto, the first Cello Concerto).

Perhaps Kabalevsky's most important contribution to the world of music-making is his consistent efforts to connect children to music. Not only did he write music specifically directed at bridging the gap between children's technical skills and adult aesthetics, but during his lifetime he set up a pilot program of music education in twenty-five Soviet schools. Kabalevsky himself taught a class of seven-year-olds for a time, teaching them how to listen attentively and put their impressions into words. His writings on this subject were published in the United States in 1988 as Music and education: a composer writes about musical education.

The Third Piano Concerto in D major (subtitled Youth) is one of three concertos (the others are for violin and cello) written for and dedicated to young performers within the Soviet Union in 1952. This sunny and tuneful piece manages to combine pianistic pyrotechnics whilst keeping it within the range of musical ability for a keen student.

The piece is made up of three movements:

The opening movement begins with a dramatic trumpet fanfare, followed by swirling piano writing that has a touch of the great piano concertos of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. There is a central dramatic cadenza before the opening theme returns, the movement ending with the same short fanfare.

The second movement begins in G minor in a far more austere style, using pizzicato string notes over which a melody is played in octaves on the piano. There is a shimmering central section at a faster tempo that moves through various major keys before the opening minor theme is reinstated, but this time with a forte from the full orchestra. The opening quiet atmosphere eventually returns at the end of this movement.

The fiendishly difficult final movement starts at breakneck speed, which is only briefly interrupted in the middle by a little march. Just before the end a sweeping romantic melody first heard in movement one is played at full volume before the concerto ends with a prestissimo coda.