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Serenade for Strings
January 24 & 25, 2008
Click on the  to hear the musical examples.
Edvard Grieg
1843-1907 |
From Holberg’s Time, Op.40
Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
The most successful and best-known of 19th century Scandinavian composers, Edvard Grieg was one of the great exponents of Romantic nationalism. He saw it as his role in life to bring Scandinavian musical and literary culture to the attention of the rest of Europe, and he succeeded in this endeavor. He was most comfortable with and excelled in the smaller musical forms, such as intimate songs and short piano pieces. As composer, pianist and conductor, he became a sought-after fixture in Europe’s music centers. His wife Nina was an accomplished singer, and the two traveled extensively together, popularizing his songs and piano works. In the process he helped bring the writings of Scandinavian poets – the best known being the playwright Henrik Ibsen– to the attention of the rest of Europe.
As an student he had been a failure. He quit school at 15 never to return. Under the sponsorship of Norwegian violinist Ole Bull he was granted a scholarship to the Conservatory in Leipzig but hated his teachers there and never forgave them their conservatism and pedantry. Understandably, he was not too happy with the constraints of the classical sonata type, and of all his surviving output only eight works fall into this category: a youthful symphony, the famous piano concerto, a string quartet, a piano sonata, the three violin sonatas and the cello sonata. In all his other compositions he insisted on the freedom of form so dear to the Romantic tradition.
Grieg composed the suite From Holberg’s Time in 1884 to commemorate the bicentennial of the birth of the Norwegian dramatist Ludvig Holberg. Originally written for the piano, he orchestrated the Suite a year later. In the Suite Grieg tried to recreate past musical styles, especially the suites of the French Baroque keyboard masters, Jean-Philippe Rameau and François Couperin, who were Holberg’s contemporaries.
The Suite comprises four Baroque dances of French origin preceded by a Prelude. However, the style of Domenico Scarlatti and J.S. Bach, born a year after Holberg, can be heard respectively in the toccata-like figuration of the Prelude  and the ornamental melody in the Air. Listeners of a certain age may recall the Sarabande as the theme music from the television show of the 50s I Remember Mama, about the life of a Norwegian immigrant family in San Francisco. The Gavotte is probably the most French-sounding of the movements and the Rigaudon provides a sprightly, although rather inconsequential conclusion. Throughout the Suite, one never quite loses sight of the fact that it is the work of a nineteenth century composer.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1756-1791
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Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 218
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
There is some controversy among scholars whether Mozart himself actually gave the first performance of his five known violin concertos, but there is no question that he was already a master violinist in his childhood. In fact, his father, Leopold – ever the "backstage parent" – was frequently after him to show off his skills by writing a virtuoso concerto for the instrument: “You yourself do not know how well you play the violin,” he wrote to his son. When Mozart finally did write concerti for the instrument in 1774-75, he wrote a bunch of them, his five concerti only 12 Koechel numbers apart. At that time, Mozart was in Salzburg, in the employment of Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo for whom he both composed and served as violinist in the court orchestra. Mozart hated his employer who was a strict taskmaster and had no truck with his young musician, however talented. Although Mozart was more than seven years in the Archbishop’s employ, he spent nearly three of them on furlough, performing around Europe and, none too diplomatically, looking for another job. By 1774 he was apparently quite negligent about his violin playing and possibly wrote the concerti for his friend, the court violinist Antonio Brunetti, whose abilities were limited and who had difficulty playing them. After 1775 Mozart occasionally performed them himself.
The violin concerti are relatively modest works by a youthful master, written at a time when the genre was somewhat neglected. After the flourishing of the Baroque violin concerto by such masters as Vivaldi and Tartini, the violin concerto went into partial hibernation until Beethoven awakened it with a new kind of virtuosic writing that was to set the stage for the great romantic concerti of Mendelssohn, Bruch and Tchaikovsky, among others. Mozart left no cadenzas but most players either write their own or borrow one from the pen of any number of great violinists.
The Third Concerto in G, dated September 12, 1775, shows a marked progression from the first two. It is freer in form and more self-assured, employing the orchestra as a true partner to the soloist, rather than a pale accompaniment. The opening movement uses the ritornello of Aminta’s aria “Aer tranquillo” from the opera Il ré pastore that Mozart had composed earlier that year, one of the composer's few cases of self-borrowing. It is a cheerful, rhythmic theme, and after a transition on the oboes, the soloist enters, elaborating and developing it, eventually leading to a puckish new theme. Subsequently, nearly every time the soloist enters, he introduces new material.
The slow movement is one of those ravishingly sensuous adagios that are a Mozart hallmark. It is the only movement in which the flutes participate. The single theme has two distinct sections, the first a long legato phrase, followed by a more detached passage. The movement is in the customary ternary form, but the middle section provides contrast only by transformation of the theme in the minor mode.
The Finale begins as a rollicking rondo with a very simple theme. Although it is customary for the repetitions of the rondo theme to alternate with episodes of new material, Mozart takes the convention to some unusual places. He continually vacillates between G major and g minor, including a passage in which the tempo slows in combination with the shift to g minor, Mozart’s key of extreme pathos and despair. But the dark mood does not persist and the high spirits return with a theme resembling a German folk tune and finally to the original rondo theme. The movement ends quietly and somewhat unexpectedly with a simple repetition of the rondo theme. Mozart frequently created unity in his multi-movement works in all genres by creating subtle thematic relationships or a parallel structure between one or more movements. In this Concerto the parallels involve the pronounced shift to the minor mode in each movement.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840-1893
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Serenade for Strings, Op.48
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 1840-1893
The year 1880 was not a very productive one for Tchaikovsky, but in the fall he produced in quick succession two vastly dissimilar works: The bombastic 1812 Overture, composed for the consecration of the Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow to commemorate Russia’s victory over the armies of Napoleon; and the Serenade for Strings, one of his warmest, heart-felt creations.
Tchaikovsky commented on the two works: "The overture will be very loud, noisy, but I wrote it without any warm feelings of love and so it will probably be of no artistic worth. But the Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner compulsion. This is a piece from the heart and so, I venture to say, it does not lack artistic worth." He wrote to his friend and publisher: “Whether because it is my latest child or because in reality it is not bad, I am terribly in love with this Serenade and can scarcely wait to have it presented to the world.”
He was not to be disappointed. The Serenade was received enthusiastically at its first performance in St. Petersburg, and the valse had to be encored. It is surprisingly lighthearted, compared to the composer's many melancholy works and has remained a favorite with audiences ever since for its freshness and charm, its brilliant string writing, its graceful waltz, its richly expressive elegy, and its lively finale based on a Russian folk tune.
In a way, the Serenade was an accident. When he started writing, Tchaikovsky was planning a symphony or perhaps a string quartet, and the Serenade just evolved. In the heading of the score, the composer wrote: “The larger the string orchestra, the better will the composer's desires be fulfilled.''
The themes of the first movement each represent a gradual increase in tempo. It opens with a majestic main theme that recurs as a frame for themovement – and the Serenad as a whole. A transition theme gradually picks up the tempo into the main subsidiary theme, a whirling waltz. The Allegro section is repeated with the opening theme, serving as a frame to close the movement.
The Waltz, the equivalent of the Classical minuet/trio, is an ABA form with internal repeats and a short contrasting middle (or B) section.
The Elegie represents the emotional heart of the Serenade. Its three themes all resemble each other in shape – each one beginning with a full measure rising scalar "upbeat." But they differ sharply in character. The first resembles an accompanied recitative, which leads into a more lyric second theme, introduced by pizzicato strings (in the style of a guitar or lute). The third theme is simply a variation of the second theme, although rendered more emotionally intense by its rising sequences
The final movement, marked Tema russo (Russian theme), begins with a shimmering slow introduction, an echo of the mood of the preceding Elegie. Whether Tchaikovsky intended that this Andante melody as the Russian theme in question is not clear, since it breaks out into another Russian virtuosic Allegro con spirito, showcasing the fast staccato bowing prowess of the upper strings. The second melody is a contrasting legato. An extensive coda is a reprise of the very opening of the Serenade, plus a final flourish of the Allegro melody.
Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2007
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