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Mendelssohn: Symphony No.4 in a, Op.90 (‘Italian’)
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 294-301
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Summary
This glorious symphony, one of the most ebullient, effervescent, and joyful masterpieces of its time, remains today as fresh and sparkling as the day it was minted. Yet its spontaneity was insufficiently acknowledged by its creator who very nearly discarded the precious results of his inspiration, only, bafflingly, to replace them by prosaic phrases of little charm.
In several respects the history of this symphony is the opposite of that of the ‘Scottish’. Its number, ‘4’, reflects only its late date of publication; it was written nine years earlier than No.3. Then for No.3 it is the revised (1843) version that was published and is today always played, whereas for No.4 it is the first (1833). This is fortunate; whereas the revisions to No.3 are all subtle refinements and improvements, those to No.4 are, on the contrary, invariably detrimental, at every point replacing the felicitous with the gawky, the natural with the contrived, the spontaneous with the laboured. The argument may be proffered that such a judgement derives merely from familiarity, but this is too facile a claim; the extent to which every beautiful effect is systematically, brutally cut down is a depressing one, and we can only be eternally grateful to Felix's sister Fanny for her blunt and uncompromising criticism of his revisions.
The work was composed and first performed in 1833, but Mendelssohn remained unsatisfied with it, declaring that it needed “many necessary improvements”. The following year he found himself able to tinker with all the last three movements, but then found the first movement out of kilter and feared he would have to completely rewrite it, which he was reluctant to do. Thus the work remained in limbo for the rest of his life, unpublished in any form. Only in 1851 was it resuscitated by Julius Rietz, who had conducted it in Leipzig in 1849 (he probably chose the 1833 version merely because it was complete whereas the 1834 one was not), and published by Breitkopf & Härtel, who then reissued it as part of their Gesamtausgabe.
sources
All sources considered here are of the First Version (1833) only – except Uh which gives both.
Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme (‘Enigma’), Op.36
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 07 March 2023, pp 152-165
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Summary
The ‘Enigma’ Variations surely rate as Elgar's masterpiece, notwithstanding his own inscription “This is the best of me” on the last page of the autograph score of The Dream of Gerontius. The piece originated quite casually while Elgar was improvising at the piano, and his wife Alice remarked “Edward, that's a good tune”, whereupon he began playing it in different ways which might remind her of one or other of their particular friends. The short score was finished by the end of 1898, and Elgar's close friend A.J. Jaeger of Novello's (‘Nimrod’) was shown it in January 1899. The great German conductor Hans Richter agreed to conduct the premiere; but the story of how Richter came to see the work in the first place is not so well known: one evening the composer Hubert Parry “was sitting at home after dinner at his house in Kensington Square, when Jaeger turned up and asked to see him. He had the score of the Variations under his arm, and showed it to Parry. It was a terrible night, with a howling gale and sheets of rain, and any sensible man would have put off his good deeds until the morrow. But one look at the score was good enough for Parry. He jumped into a hansom and drove off with it to Richter” (Fifield 2005:6). The rest is history: the work achieved enthusiastic reviews in both England and Germany, and Elgar at last became an international composer of stature.
The work's publication history is complicated by revisions. After the first performance Elgar was persuaded to lengthen the Finale considerably; after 763 it originally raced quite perfunctorily to a final ƒƒ flourish in just four bars. This revision was in time for publication, and though some, including Donald Francis Tovey, regretted the new “tub-thumping” ending, it is now wholly accepted and always played (the original is published for the first time in Ue). But there were subsequent tweakings, mainly to the dynamics, and although a revised printing of score and parts was issued in 1904, this carries no sign or admission of any difference, and as a result the revisions were apparently forgotten, and further Novello reprints, even including Ue, inadvertently appeared with the original text.
Preface
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 07 March 2023, pp ix-xv
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Summary
The greater part of my working life has been devoted to a series of Urtext editions for the publisher Bärenreiter, starting with the Beethoven symphonies and continuing with most of the other principal works of Beethoven – except Fidelio which (I always maintained) would require an entire lifetime on its own. For certain specific reasons we also delved occasionally into the byways of Elgar and Dvořák.
But what about all the other composers? There is hardly a work in the orchestral repertoire that can truly be said to be free of misprints, inconsistencies between score and parts, or other textual problems. Like my father, conductor Norman Del Mar, before me, I made notes in my score of whatever work I was conducting, of apparent contradictions, errors and puzzles of all descriptions. Hence these textual reports, which range from (at their most primitive) merely a list of known misprints, to (at the other end of the scale) almost Urtext editions in their own right. Many composers’ autographs have been published in facsimile, and first editions are often available to view online in both score and parts, so the relevant sources may be openly available to consult and compare.
Beethoven has been an especially rewarding composer to work with. Painstakingly he worked at his canvas, honing and perfecting it down to the last minute detail, and once he had reached the result he was seeking he had it published and then left it alone. Further revisions post-publication are rare; a notorious example is the Fifth Symphony, where he added a bar in no fewer than five places in the first movement, causing the poor publishers to spoil their beautiful plates by having to roughly insert the bar in every part wherever it was required. But at least the decision is clear; this extra bar is, without doubt (even though it nowhere survives in Beethoven's hand), the last will of the composer.
Other composers were neither so decisive, nor so exact, nor so reverent towards their earlier works. Mendelssohn agonised about his ‘Italian’ Symphony to the extent that he completely revised the second, third and fourth movements, yet the verdict on this revision can only be one of regret, for there is not a bar that is improved, only weakened – as his sister Fanny was quick to chide him.
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.4 in F Minor, Op.36
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 07 March 2023, pp 610-614
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Summary
After the first performance of Symphony No.3 one critic wrote: “…though from Mr Tchaikovsky we have a right to expect something more”. Barely two years later, he delivered; this Fourth is no less than a cracking masterpiece, one of the stable and most popular warhorses in the entire orchestral repertoire. A lot had happened to Tchaikovsky in those two years: he had been befriended by the extraordinary, kind and sympathetic rich widow Mme. Nadezhda von Meck, who granted him a substantial annuity enabling him to devote himself entirely to composition and to whom this first new symphony is dedicated. But the turbulence of the symphony, with its insistent ‘Fate’ motif, reflects the events of that crisis year 1877: the desperate, insoluble conflict of his life was that the comforts of steady normality for which he longed were absolutely incompatible with his homosexuality, and as the sketches for the symphony were approaching completion he was – crazily – persuading himself to go ahead and get married to a poor young student who had written to him with a passionate declaration of love. The outcome was of course disastrous, but by that time the music of the symphony was essentially finished. Tchaikovsky entrusted its first performance, in Moscow in February 1878, to Nikolai Rubinstein, “the only conductor in the world I can rely on”, but in the end the symphony was inadequately rehearsed and indifferently performed, and had to await its St Petersburg premiere in November, under Nápravník, for the triumphant success it deserved.
sources
A Autograph manuscript (1877), in the Russian National Museum of Music, Moscow, viewable online at IMSLP
E First edition score, published by P. Jurgenson, Moscow in 1880
Br Full score and parts, published by Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig c.1946, reprinted by Dover; score has bar numbers, parts originally not, but in the Wiesbaden reprint they are added
Um Urtext score, published in 1949 by State Music Publishers, Moscow as part of the Soviet Tchaikovsky Complete Edition
Schumann: Overture Genoveva, Op.81
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 435-435
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Summary
Schumann was not an operatic composer any more than Schubert (cf. Rosamunde above) was, and his only opera Genoveva (1847–49) was a total flop. However, the overture was written in an initial burst of enthusiasm before he started work on the opera, and is a truly inspired and beautiful piece. Schumann conducted it in Leipzig in February 1850, and it was published by Peters a few months later.
sources
A Autograph score, in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
E First edition score, published by C.F. Peters, Leipzig in 1850
Br Full score, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1882 as part of its Gesamtausgabe
EE Miniature score, published by Eulenburg (c.1920); the text is taken directly from Br
The only two problems in this piece both occur in the last bar.
Elgar: Concert-Overture Cockaigne
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 178-185
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Summary
In 1900 the Royal Philharmonic Society offered Elgar a commission for a new orchestral work, and although the young composer was really trying to write a symphony a number of stepping-stones were necessary on the way, of which Cockaigne was the first (and In the South, below, another). He would naturally have taken it first to Novello, but there had been unpleasant wranglings over royalties for both Enigma and Gerontius, and financial worries compelled him to seek more favourable terms, so he enquired elsewhere. Schott had already published a few of his works and were in principle interested, but Booseys offered a better deal, and as a result went on to secure other profitable works such as the Pomp and Circumstance marches.
sources
A Autograph score (1901), in the British Library
E,P Full score and parts, published by Boosey & Co. in 1901
Ue Urtext edition, edited by Sarah Thompson and published by the Elgar Society in 2013. See Froissart above for general comments on Ue; for Cockaigne Ue also used an earlier (unpublished) version of the present report
A contains engraver's markings concerning layout and pagination which correspond with those of E, indicating that A was the Stichvorlage for E.
Bruch: Violin Concerto No.1 in G Minor, Op.26
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 79-93
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Summary
Given how much music Max Bruch composed, and how unmemorable almost all his melodies are, the surprise is the degree of perfection in this gem of a concerto; one would not wish to change a note, nor cut a single bar of it. A couple of other works are lesser peaks in his oeuvre (Scottish Fantasy, Kol Nidrei), but otherwise nothing approaches the assured mastery in this glorious piece, despite his own personal exasperation when, inevitably, yet another soloist approached him for advice or even a run-through. In 1887 he wrote in desperation to his publisher Fritz Simrock: “I even get cross and tell them ‘I can't listen to this piece any more. Do you really think I’ve only written this one concerto? Go and play one of the others for a change; they’re just as good, maybe even better!’ “ – but this was wishful thinking. The fact is that he had made a crucial mistake: due to financial embarrassment at the time he had sold the work outright to the publisher Cranz, and for the rest of his life could only recoup paltry royalties from his other two, greatly inferior, concertos.
Yet this first one did not simply emerge as a unique, perfectly-formed miracle; it was the product of painstaking work, with much revision and refinement. There was even an entire original version (given at the first performance in 1866), after which Bruch consulted Joseph Joachim who made many improvements to the solo part, all of which the composer approved (unlike those additionally proposed by Ferdinand David later), and the many cuts and deletions in the autograph score attest to the degree of perfection towards which he was striving before finally he was prepared to submit the concerto for publication.
Textually the problem with this piece is that the missing links between the surviving manuscript sources and the published editions have not survived, so that evidence is lacking as to how far differences between them are the result of revisions or (on the other hand) errors. Nevertheless many discrepancies can be solved with some confidence.
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D, Op.35
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 644-650
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Summary
First Beethoven, then Brahms; finally Tchaikovsky's concerto (written in the same year as the Brahms, 1878) completes the trilogy of great Violin Concertos in that eminently suitable key for the instrument, D major. All three, despite their inevitable element of virtuosity, are more essentially lyrical outpourings of melody rather than virtuoso showpieces; their greatness lies in their consistently inspired level of purely musical invention, as opposed to the technical fireworks. Tchaikovsky was a variable composer, writing first-class masterpieces simultaneously with dry and uninspired works, but this concerto is one of his very best pieces, and one of the few that is predominantly cheerful. The only reason why it has always been overshadowed by its sister work, the First Piano Concerto, is simply the latter's first five bars, whose irresistible, grand horn call has propelled the entire work into the select gallery of all-time favourites in the classical repertoire. Presumably the audience, thereafter lulled into soporific contentment, does not notice that once the introduction has run its course the popular motif never reappears, and the rest of the work is musically on a much less exalted level. But the case of the Violin Concerto is exactly the opposite: Tchaikovsky adopts the same curious procedure, starting with a theme that is to prove irrelevant to the main body of the movement; but this time the opening is not particularly striking, whereas the rest of the symphonic material is electrifying. In his arrangement for violin and piano, published first, he dedicated it to Leopold Auer, already the dedicatee of the Sérenade mélancholique, but Auer's opinion was that the solo part needed thorough revision, and somehow he never found the time to execute the task, so the concerto languished until a younger man, Adolf Brodsky, realised the magnificence of the work, learnt it, and made his Viennese debut with it in December 1881, conducted by Hans Richter, upon which Tchaikovsky dedicated it instead to Brodsky. The old-fashioned critics were abusive, but the public loved it and it was repeated many times, eventually (in 1893, a few months before the composer's death) by Auer himself.
Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No.2 in C Minor, Op.18
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 07 March 2023, pp 369-370
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Summary
For the astonishing circumstances surrounding the composition of this most popular of Rachmaninov's works, see Symphony No.2 above. (At least, such is the official version of events, from Rachmaninov's autobiographical notes. The composer's grandson, Alexandre, claimed a rather different slant: the true reason for Rachmaninov's visits to the hypnotherapist Dr Nikolai Dahl was to court his daughter, who was the secret inspiration behind the concerto and remained a shadowy presence during the composer's subsequent married life.) But the reason why his next piece should be a piano concerto at all, is due to his visit to London in 1899, where he enjoyed such a success as conductor, pianist and composer that he was invited to return to play his First Piano Concerto. He felt this was too immature (he revised it in 1917 and 1920), and instead promised to write a “second and better” one. Already in the autumn of 1900 he performed the second and third movements in Moscow; they were highly successful, and the whole concerto received its premiere in November 1901. It was first heard in London in May 1902, but not until 1908 was Rachmaninov able to fulfil his promise to play it there himself.
sources
A Autograph score (1900–01), in the Russian National Museum of Music, Moscow
E,P First edition score and parts, published by A. Gutheil in 1901, reprinted identically by Boosey & Hawkes in 1947
There is a remarkably precise correlation between score and parts; in those few instances where we can identify a possible textual query, the parts carry the identical text to the score.
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.5 in E Minor, Op.64
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 615-619
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Summary
We tend to think of Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies as a group of masterpieces, but in time the Fourth is much closer to the Third than to the Fifth, which only followed after eleven years. In this long gap Tchaikovsky wrote plenty of music, even including a symphony (Manfred); but the importance of these years was primarily the consolidation of his reputation. Abroad his fame was spreading, and his brother Modest was able to write: “The Tchaikovsky of 1885 seemed a new man compared with the nervous and misanthropic Tchaikovsky of 1878.” In 1888 he embarked upon a European tour that even included engagements as a conductor; though he remained to the end doubtful about his powers, he managed to overcome his earlier panic about conducting, and the first performance of the Fifth took place under his own direction in St Petersburg in November of that year. The evening was a triumph, but afterwards he persistently had pangs, veering wildly between affection and regard for it, and a distressing conviction that it was artificial and repellent. However, in January 1889 he set out on his second concert tour of the West, and on arriving at Hamburg was gratified to discover that Brahms had stayed behind an extra day in order to hear him rehearse his new symphony. After the highly successful performance there he wrote to Modest: “But the most pleasing thing of all was that the symphony ceased to strike me as bad, and that I have fallen in love with it again.” It has remained a firm favourite in concert programmes.
The only serious error that is commonly encountered is the brass note in IV 372.
sources
A Autograph manuscript (1888), in the Russian National Museum of Music, Moscow, viewable online at IMSLP
E,P First edition score and parts, published by P. Jurgenson in 1888
Br Full score (with bar numbers), published by Breitkopf & Härtel c.1930
Um Urtext score, published in 1963 by State Music Publishers, Moscow as part of the Soviet Tchaikovsky Complete Edition (bar numbers in II overlook one system of 4 bars, so “110”–“180” are in fact 114–184)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.6 in B Minor, Op.74, ‘Pathétique’
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 620-632
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The ‘Pathétique’ Symphony is Tchaikovsky's last completed composition, his final testament and his greatest work, in which he left enshrined both his deepest emotions and feelings about all that he held dear in life, and the bitterness and despair that consumed him in these last months. Just one year earlier his benefactress Mme. von Meck had broken off relations with him; he was obsessed by fear of death; and although he was showered with honours he felt his self-confidence shattered. He wrote a letter to his nephew on 23 February, saying: “the idea for a new symphony occurrred to me, this time a programme symphony but with a programme that shall remain an enigma to all – they may guess as they please but the symphony will be called simply ‘Programme Symphony’ ”. The first performance took place in St Petersburg on 28 October, conducted by Tchaikovsky himself; then on the day after the premiere, while he was packing the score to send to his publisher, he said to his brother Modest: “How can I call it ‘Programme Symphony’ when I don't want to reveal the programme?” Modest suggested ‘Tragic Symphony’, but that did not satisfy him. As Modest left the room, suddenly the title ‘Pathétique’ came into his head, and with a ‘bravo’ Tchaikovsky acclaimed the idea and immediately wrote it on the score. Unlike its predecessors, he never had any doubts as to its quality; he repeatedly called it “the best and most sincere of all my works”. At the premiere the public had been somewhat nonplussed, but when Tchaikovsky suddenly died the symphony was given at a memorial concert in November under Nápravník and immediately attracted public attention, making a profound impression doubtless due to its clear autobiographical message: the utter, inconsolable resignation at the end of the finale, in particular, was proclaimed to be prophetic of the composer's impending death.
sources
A Autograph score (1893; essentially finished around 19 August) in the Russian National Museum of Music, Moscow; published in facsimile by State Music Publishers in 1970
(AV Autograph manuscript of Pf duet arrangment, finished by 24 August; lost)
At this point Tchaikovsky decided to invite the violinist Yulii Konyus to his house in Klin, in order to insert bowings in the autograph, something he had never done before. Yulii brought with him his younger pianist brother Lev, and they worked together, staying overnight, around 16–18 August, Tchaikovsky and Lev playing from AV, Yulii entering bowings into A. It soon became clear to Tchaikovsky that his piano reduction was unplayable, and needed to be completely reworked; he wrote to Jurgenson on 20 August, saying that he was giving this task to Lev.
Bartók: Piano Concerto No.1
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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Two factors combined to produce this concerto in 1926: Bartók's burgeoning career as a concert pianist, and the beginning of a period of intense occupation with the percussive, often savage, element of the keyboard which came to a peak ten years later in the two masterpieces Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. The concerto was first performed at the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Frankfurt in 1927, with the composer as soloist and Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting.
sources
A Autograph score, Stichvorlage for E, in the archive of Universal Edition, Vienna
E,P First edition score and parts, published by Universal Edition in 1927
M Miniature score, with either Universal or Philharmonia covers, probably published at the same time
E, P and M differ from one another in certain respects (below); it has not yet been established which is more authoritative. But M suffers from one clear deficiency: the total absence of the long and detailed list, present on page 2 of E, of instructions to the percussion in numbered paragraphs, corresponding with small figures above those parts throughout the work.
Mendelssohn: Overture The Hebrides (‘Fingal’s Cave’), Op.26
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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Though always fondly known as ‘Fingal's Cave’, this overture was (disappointingly, perhaps) actually conceived the day before Mendelssohn made his steamer trip to the rocky Isle of Staffa, famous for its ominous basalt pillars, like organ pipes, at the mouth of Fingal's Cave. Rather, it was on the cliff top at Oban, staring across the Firth of Lorn to Mull and the Hebrides, that the view struck him so forcefully that he immediately drew a pencil sketch of the islands. Later that day he crossed to Mull, and at Tobermory began the letter to his father which included, in short score, the first 101 bars of the overture that the scene had inspired. However, this was 1829; Mendelssohn spent the next three years attempting to work his sketches into a coherent musical form. The following year a draft was ready, entitled ‘The Lonely Island’ (‘Ouvertüre zur einsamen Insel’), and this was very soon succeeded by a full autograph score with the heading ‘Die Hebriden’, dated 16 December 1830 (in the Morgan Library, New York). However, Mendelssohn was unhappy with this score, and two years later, with the prospect of some concerts in England, he returned to the work, completing a fresh version in Spring 1832 which received its first performance in London on 14 May 1832 under the title ‘Overture to the Isles of Fingal’. Curiously the piece was first published in an arrangement by the composer for piano duet, by both Mori & Lavenu (London, with title The Overture to The Isles of Fingal) and Breitkopf & Härtel (Leipzig, with title Ouverture aux Hébrides (Fingals Höhle)) in 1833, apparently simultaneously.
The overture represents a complete departure in the history of music, without any apparent antecedent except perhaps Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony; such a dramatic depiction of the sea in music had never before been known. Wagner, whose overture to The Flying Dutchman is in some respects modelled on it, regarded it as Mendelssohn's finest work.
sources
A Autograph score (1832), in the Bodleian Library, Oxford; a working copy with many revisions and corrections. Although A is completely furnished with dynamics and articulation, the text is not entirely in its final form; Mendelssohn made further revisions prior to publication. Hence A's text is far from binding, but can give us a degree of insight and guidance
P First edition parts, published by Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig in 1834, with the title Ouverture zu den Hebriden (Fingals-Höhle)
E First edition score, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1835, with (only) the title Die Fingals-Höhle
Br Full score edited by Julius Rietz, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1874 as part of its Gesamtausgabe; this remains the recommended edition
Strauss: Metamorphosen: Study for 23 Solo Strings
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 593-596
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Summary
The period between the two world wars was a relatively fallow one for Strauss. Nothing of first-rate importance had appeared since Ariadne auf Naxos in 1912, and it seemed as if his last decades would witness a similar decline to those of Sibelius. But Strauss, unlike Sibelius, still had some of his greatest and most beautiful music to write; for his art was to experience an Indian Summer virtually unparalleled in music, with such masterpieces as the Second Horn Concerto, the Oboe Concerto, Metamorphosen, and finally the heavenly Four Last Songs pouring from the great octogenarian's pen. Metamorphosen is arguably the profoundest and most complex of all these ‘Indian Summer’ works; far more than merely one product of this last upsurge of genius, it stands as a testament of personal tragedy and loss. In October 1943 the Munich Nationaltheater was destroyed in an air raid, a disaster which shook Strauss so deeply that he wrote: “This was the greatest catastrophe that has ever been brought into my life, for which there can be no consolation and, in my old age, no hope…”. Soon after this he jotted down the theme which was, in its final form, to become the kernel of Metamorphosen – inscribed with the words “Trauer um München” (Lament for Munich).
But Metamorphosen was a lament for much more than Munich. In February 1945 Dresden, the last German city standing, was utterly devastated. “…I too am in a mood of despair!”, Strauss wrote. “The Goethehaus, the world's greatest sanctuary, destroyed! My beautiful Dresden – Weimar – Munich, all gone!” And now the full score of Metamorphosen was completed almost within a month; clearly the work is a memorial to all those great German cities which Strauss had known and loved so well.
The ‘München’ theme first occurs in the ninth bar, stated by the back two violas. Its close resemblance to a famous theme from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony is obvious; but the extraordinary thing is that it was, at first, accidental. Only while working on it did Strauss recognise the similarity. To decide to make a special feature of this very resemblance, as he does at the end, instead of discarding the theme entirely, was a stroke of genius which added another dimension to the whole work. The metamorphosis, in other words, took place as the composition developed out of the sketches and not within the work itself, where the theme remains unchanged.
Sibelius: Symphony No.5 in E Flat, Op.82
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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- 08 June 2023
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- 07 March 2023, pp 483-487
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Summary
The Fifth Symphony was conceived optimistically in 1914 just after Sibelius had enjoyed a most successful trip to America, but was finally wrapped up only in 1919 when the world had become a very much darker place. In its original version, in four separate movements, it was premiered for Sibelius's 50th birthday concert in 1915 and received enthusiastically, but the composer remained dissatisfied, and insisted on revising its structure so that the first two movements are fused together. This 1916 version was duly performed on his 51st birthday, but this time, curiously, drew mixed reviews. Still disturbed, he withdrew it for over a year, nearly cut out the second half altogether and (briefly) considered issuing just the first half as a Symphonische Fantasie, but such drastic turbulence lasted only a few days, and by May 1919 all was restored, very much as it was in 1916 but with some relatively minor reworking. This final version was first performed, again under Sibelius's direction, in November 1919, and has remained one of his most popular symphonies. The grand, swinging horns theme in the finale was inspired by a sudden vision, outside his house, of no fewer than “sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, that beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming, silver ribbon.”
sources
A Autograph score, in the National Library of Finland, Helsinki
E,P First edition score and parts, published by Wilhelm Hansen in 1921. The full score has Plate No.17538, the miniature 17539, surprising since the miniature is an exact reproduction of the full. This version was reprinted by Dover and is found online at IMSLP
F,R Revision of E,P by Paavo Berglund (1974); the parts were completely recopied. This is now the only version of the symphony currently available from the publisher
In its original (1915) version there were four distinct movements. For the 1916 revision Sibelius created a continuous bridge between the first two, so that most commentators maintain there are now three movements; but no one would claim, on (after all) identical grounds, that Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony – or, indeed, Sibelius's own Second – has only three movements (the problem recurs in Mendelssohn, see above).
Editorial Conventions
- Jonathan Del Mar
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- Orchestral Masterpieces under the Microscope
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Schumann: Cello Concerto in a Minor, Op.129
- Jonathan Del Mar
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Summary
The Cello Concerto was composed in a burst of creative inspiration at the beginning of the last truly happy period of Schumann's life, just after he had moved from Dresden to Düsseldorf in September 1850 to take up his appointment as music director there. He completed it in just two weeks, then immediately wrote the ‘Rhenish’ Symphony. Though the concerto was not written with any known context, occasion, or even cellist in mind, it was perhaps not a coincidence that just three months earlier, at a concert to celebrate his 40th birthday, his friend Andreas Grabau had played the only other surviving work he wrote for solo cello, the Fünf Stücke im Volkston, op.102. Four years passed before publication, by which time Schumann was tortured by ‘inner voices’, but he was able to see the work through the press, and it was published in 1854 though not performed until 1860, four years after his death.
Apropos the Saint-Saëns concerto (above), it is interesting to note that Schumann did originally entitle this work Konzertstück; it is a few minutes longer than Saint- Saëns’s, but the way in which all the movements are linked is of course similar.
sources
A Autograph score, housed in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska, Krakow; at the bottom of each page, below Pk, is Schumann's own Pf reduction
V First edition Vc + Pf reduction, published by Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig in 1854
S Solo Vc part, published together with V Where V = S (almost always), they are referred to below as E.
P First edition orchestral parts, published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1854
No full score was published until:
Br Breitkopf & Härtel Gesamtausgabe full score, published in 1883; the Eulenburg miniature has almost the identical text
Pe Vc + Pf reduction published by C.F. Peters, Leipzig c.1887, essentially based on Br; for this report a more recent printing was used with a separate Vc part edited by Rudolf Metzmacher c.1965, published by Peters, Frankfurt; this often (interestingly) reverts to E
EE Miniature score, published by Eulenburg c.1938; text taken from Br
Ub Breitkopf & Härtel Urtext edition Vc + Pf reduction, edited by Joachim Draheim and published in 1995; generally, simply follows E
Tchaikovsky: Fantasy-Overture After Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
- Jonathan Del Mar
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Summary
We think of Romeo and Juliet as being quintessentially Tchaikovsky at his best, white-hot with inspiration, and indeed it is one of his most exciting and successful works. What is astonishing is how much it owes to the specific instructions of his admirer, Balakirev. Shortly after the first performance of his Symphony No.1 in Moscow in 1868, Tchaikovsky, still only 28 and virtually unknown, visited St Petersburg and for the first time met the immensely influential Balakirev, head of the “Mighty Handful” group of nationalist composers that included Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Out for a walk together in May 1869, Balakirev suggested – to us today, such bold presumption, yet also prescience, seems quite extraordinary – the composition of an overture based on Romeo and Juliet, and Tchaikovsky responded to the proposal with enthusiasm. Balakirev laid down the entire road map for the work, even as far as characters, keys and tempi: it was to begin with a religioso introduction portraying Friar Laurence, followed by a sonata-form Allegro in B minor illustrating the two feuding families and a love theme in D flat (these two were Balakirev's favourite keys); these would be developed, and the piece end with the death of the lovers. Tchaikovsky meekly followed the older master's demands, went away, and wrote what is unquestionably his first masterpiece, exceeding in quality anything ever written by Balakirev. However, the process by which he arrived at the piece we now know and love was far from effortless. In its original version it was completed in November 1869 and first performed in March 1870 under Nikolai Rubinstein, but it was a failure, and he set about a drastic revision, accepting Balakirev's criticism that the entire opening section had to be rewritten. A second version was performed in 1872 under Nápravník, but as so often Tchaikovsky was still not satisfied, and only after his final revisions in 1880 – by which time he had of course written the Fourth Symphony – was the piece ready for publication in 1881. Surprisingly, however, its first performance did not take place until April 1886, in Tbilisi under Ippolitov-Ivanov.
Ravel: Piano Concerto
- Jonathan Del Mar
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Summary
Ravel was such a fine pianist that it is surprising he did not write a concerto earlier, and fortuitous that just before his final, debilitating illness set in in 1932 he just managed to squeeze in two. This G major concerto was the first to be conceived – he had had hopes of polishing up his rusty piano technique in order to play it himself – but before he could set to work on it seriously there came the commission from the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost an arm in the war and was anxious to have a concerto for the left hand only. The two works occupied Ravel for the whole of 1930 and most of 1931, the Concerto for Left Hand being finished first and performed in November 1931, the G major one played (in the end) by its dedicatee Marguerite Long, under the composer's direction, in January 1932, first in Paris, then on tour all over Europe. Ravel insisted it was written “very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. The music of a concerto, in my opinion, should be gay and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or dramatic effects.” He went on to admit that the work contained touches of jazz, “but not many”.
sources
A Autograph score (1931), Stichvorlage for E; private collection, Monaco. For a few readings I am grateful to Douglas Woodfull-Harris (Bärenreiter-Verlag)
P First edition parts, published by Durand in January 1932
V First edition for 2 pianos, published by Durand in January 1932
E First edition score, published by Durand in January 1932
F,P’ Revised score and parts, published in 1966
The only score and parts now generally available (also online at IMSLP) are F and P’, whose text dates from 1966. The obvious question, as to how far differences from the original text in E are authentic, is mostly unanswerable; their origin is obscure. Worryingly, almost all have no traceable evidence of authenticity, but seem to have been made by the publishers arbitrarily.
Brahms: Violin Concerto in D, Op.77
- Jonathan Del Mar
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Brahms wrote this concerto, one of the two or three most masterly violin concertos in the repertoire, especially for his close friend, the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim. Joachim was a fine composer himself, had dedicated his own Violin Concerto in D “in the Hungarian style” to Brahms in 1861, and now collaborated intimately with him, just as Ferdinand David had earlier with Mendelssohn, on the details of the solo part. He premiered it, with Brahms conducting, in Leipzig on New Year's Day 1879, after which Brahms made further revisions before publication in October that same year.
sources
A Autograph score (1878) in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., who published it in facsimile in 1979 (viewable online at IMSLP)
E,P First Edition, published in score and parts by Simrock, Berlin in 1879
EE Miniature score, published c.1915 by Eulenburg
Br Breitkopf & Härtel full score, edited by Hans Gál and published in 1926
Uh Urtext edition, edited by Linda Correll Roesner and Michael Struck and published by Henle in 2004
Ub Urtext edition, edited by Clive Brown and published by Bärenreiter in 2006
Where Uh and Ub agree, they are referred to as Ur