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Dvorák Cello Concerto
May 2, 3 & 4, 2008
Click on the  to hear the musical examples.
Antonín Dvorák
1841-1904
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Cello Concerto in b minor, Op.104
Antonín Dvorák, 1841-1904
Antonín Dvorák’s sojourn in the United States from 1892 to 1895 came about through the efforts of Mrs. Jeanette B. Thurber. A dedicated and idealistic proponent of an American national musical style, she underwrote and administered the first American music conservatory, the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Because of Dvorák’s popularity throughout Europe, he was Thurber’s first choice as director. He, in turn, was probably lured to the big city so far from home by both a large salary and a passion regarding musical nationalism that paralleled Mrs. Thurber’s own. He was eager to learn more of the Indian and Negro music, which he believed should be the basis of the American style of composition. He also shared with Mrs. Thurber the conviction that the National Conservatory should admit Negro students.
The years in New York were quite productive in spite of his administrative and teaching duties. He composed string quartets, a string quintet, the Ten Biblical Songs, Symphony No.9 and, lastly, the Cello Concerto in b minor.
For a number of years, Dvorák had been asked by his friend, the cellist Hanus Wihan, for a cello concerto. But the ultimate push was a performance by cellist, composer and conductor Victor Herbert of his Cello Concerto No.2 at a New York Philharmonic concert. Dvorák thought the work splendid, and a few months later sat down to write his own concerto, finishing it just before he left New York to return to his native Bohemia.
Dvorák resisted Wihan’s suggestions for a bravura piece, preferring to focus on the emotional rather than the technical, with the cellist not pitted against the orchestra, but rather enhancing it. While writing the concerto he received news that his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová was critically ill. Dvorák had been in love with her and had wanted to marry her 30 years earlier, but he had to settle for her sister instead. As a tribute to Josefina, he included in the second movement of the concerto a reference to his song “Leave me alone,” which was her favorite. Shortly after his return to Prague, Josefina died and Dvorák changed the ending of the Concerto, adding the elegiac and exquisitely painful coda to the final movement, again briefly quoting the song in a duet between the cello and the concertmaster.
The Concerto is a monument to Dvorák’s incredible gift for melody, not only in the basic thematic material but also in the “connective tissue” that holds together any great musical work of art. The winds, especially the flutes, play an extremely important role in this Concerto, sometimes seeming to shut out the rest of the orchestra from their private conversation with the soloist.
The clarinet opens the Concerto with one of the most emotionally evocative eight notes in the repertory,  a theme that lends itself to a variety of harmonizations that Dvorák makes good use of in the course of the movement. He makes particular use of the first three notes of the theme to generate new ones. It is followed shortly by a second theme in the relative major key, D major, introduced by the French horn. While the Concerto is certainly not a bravura piece, the cello part in this movement is difficult both technically and emotionally. It requires a “private” and intense development of the two themes, as well as rapid figurative accompaniments to the orchestra. The movement adheres to the basic structure of sonata allegro form, but Dvorák, like many other composers, does not adhere slavishly to the template. He uses the recapitulation to insert the first of the several tragic reveries in the Concerto, here a dialogue between cello and flute. There is no formal cadenza, nor would one have been appropriate in this piece.
The Adagio is another dialogue for cello and woodwinds. It begins gently, with a choir of woodwinds quoting from the song, then echoed by the cello, which is joined by a pair of clarinets for the next strain of the theme. The cello continues with a poignant sighing motive that increases the emotional tension in preparation for the only appearance of the full orchestra in the entire movement in a sudden anguished interruption, an almost funereal cry. But the movement quickly returns to the quiet but intense conversation between cello and winds.
A march opens the final movement, the faster pace is sustained for a couple of minutes, but soon the cello’s reflective personality takes over, periodically slowing the tempo, returning to the original only to repeat the opening theme. A middle section introduces a proper second theme, but this one is already more subdued than the first. Throughout this Concerto it has seemed difficult for the cello to break out of its passionate reverie, and Dvorák “ends” the movement two thirds of the way through, replacing the customary cadenza with the coda, in memory of Josefina. A gentle reprise of the opening of the Concerto informs us in retrospect that it is she who has been the focus of the entire work.
Franz Schreker
1878-1934
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Prelude to a Drama
Franz Schreker
Austrian composer and conductor Franz Schreker was the son of a Jewish court photographer, Ignaz Schrecker, and his wife, a member of Austria’s Catholic aristocracy. He was first and foremost an opera composer, belonging to the group of popular Viennese opera composers of the early twentieth century that included, among others, Alexander von Zemlinsky and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. As conductor, he formed the Philharmonic Chorus in 1907, which became one of Vienna’s leading performing groups for new music, premiering a number of compositions by Arnold Schoenberg and others of the avant-garde.
From 1920 to 1932 Schreker was Director of the Musikhochschule in Berlin, transforming it into the preeminent conservatory of the period. He lost his position with the rise of the Nazi party, which also banned his music.
Schreker gained international fame in 1908 with his dance pantomime The Birthday of the Infanta. The successful premiere of his opera Die Gezeichneten (The Marked Ones) in 1918 brought him to the forefront of German opera composers, and a subsequent evaluation by an influential music critic comparing his talents to those of Richard Wagner, caused widespread outrage, much of it fired by anti-Semitism.
Schreker’s style is Late Romantic with a large infusion of experimentation in polytonality and chromaticism. The influence of Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss is also evident. Most of his orchestral works were inspired by his opera and theater work. In the late 1920s he was one of the first composers to take serious interest in electronic music and to compose for radio.
Prelude to a Drama, composed in 1913, started life in abbreviated form as a prelude to Die Gezeichneten. Given the intense drama of the 20-minute Prelude, it is worth relating it to the Puccini-like melodramma which it first accompanied. The story takes place in renaissance Genoa where Alviano Salvago, a magnanimous but physically unattractive nobleman, has created an island paradise, called Elysium, populated with erotic statuary, which he decides to donate to the city. Unbeknownst to Alviano, the handsome Count Tamare has been using the island as a venue for orgies with young girls abducted from the city. Both men love the consumptive painter, Carlotta, daughter of the Podestà (Mayor). As Carlotta paints Alviano’s portrait, the two profess their love. By the time it’s all over, however, Tamare seduces Carlotta – who has grown tired of Alviano once the magic of the sitting has dissipated. Alviano kills Tamare and Carlotta collapses over the body of her new lover.
The Prelude captures the otherworldly ambience of the island combined with the passion of the principal characters in a score that at various times recalls Puccini, Wagner and Strauss, while foreshadowing the lush, romantic film scores composed or inspired by German refugee Erich Korngold.
Schreker composed the Prelude for a large orchestra; his lush orchestration is frequently interlaced with the subtle, chamber-music effects of small ensembles. It contains numerous themes, but we do not known with what characters or incidents in the play the themes may refer to – if any. It opens and concludes with a theme that certainly portrays the mysterious island paradise. Like any traditional Romantic overture, it is constructed in sonata form with a long development section. The principal themes capture so many moods, that the Prelude becomes the drama itself. Each theme is immediately developed and enhanced in order to "lock in" the affect. The second theme picks up the tempo and reduces the chromaticism to become the most cheerful in the entire score. The third theme appears to portray the lovers Carlotta and Alviano, its passionate opening recalling Viennese operetta and continuing with the kind of violin solo that accompanied love scenes in 30s and 40s films.
Richard Strauss
1864-1949
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Suite from Der Rosenkavalier
Richard Strauss 1864-1949
Despite the disdain with which most opera plots are regarded, occasionally, an opera composer and librettist form a winning partnership where each member of the team complements the skills of the other to create a masterpiece of musical and dramatic integrity. Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte come immediately to mind, as do Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito. In the last century, composer Richard Strauss and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal found a kinship and mutual understanding that produced a series of successful operas starting in 1908 with Elektra.
Following the success of that grim and bloody piece, Strauss was searching for something considerably lighter, a Figaro-style comedy. It was von Hofmannsthal who came up with a totally new type of libretto, an amalgam of various French eighteenth-century farces. In a note to the compose he wrote: “I have...worked out a complete and entirely new scenario for a grand opera with downright comic figures and situations, and action as colorful and almost as obvious as a pantomime.”
The result was the immensely successful Der Rosenkavalier, premiered in 1911. Set in the eighteenth-century Vienna of Maria Theresa, it is an extravagantly complicated plot, including a string of farcical situations and characters. The core plot involves the youth Octavian, who has been sexually initiated by the Marschallin, the neglected young wife of an elderly field marshal. When her bumbling old cousin Baron Ochs barges in on the couple to announce to her his intention to rectify his finances by marrying Sophie, daughter of a successful merchant with pretensions, Octavian quickly dress as a chambermaid to hide his identity. As he flirts with the disguised Octavian, Ochs states his intention to woo Sophie by presenting her with a silver rose from the hand of an aristocratic emissary. After more comic business, the Marschallin entrusts Octavian with Ochs’s silver rose and its mission. At a grand ball, Octavian presents the rose to Sophie, at which point both, of course, succumb to love at first sight. Then it’s more classic comic intrigue to extricate the young heroine from her elderly fiancé. Finally, Ochs is outwitted and the Marschallin, a gracious dea ex machina, relinquishes Octavian to Sophie.
Strauss laced Der Rosenkavalier with waltz tunes at the request of his librettist – in spite of the fact that at the time of the action the waltz didn’t even exist in aristocratic ballrooms. Strauss himself extracted from the opera two Walzerfolgen (waltz sequences), and many conductors have put together their own suites from the opera.
The title “Waltz Sequence,” however, is misleading; Strauss’s Suite is a medley recalling most of the important themes and events of the opera, conjuring the magic of young love embodied in the silver rose and the Marschallin’s renunciation of love. Strauss’s father was a professional orchestra horn player. The orchestration of the Suite features some beautiful solos – especially for the horn, but also for oboe and violin – as well as chamber ensembles.
Although not always in the order in which they appear in the opera, melodies from the Suite refer to specific incidents in the plot or themes associated with particular characters. Among the most familiar waltzes are: from Act 3. And, of course, Strauss includes the theme associated with the erotic power of the silver rose on Octavian and Sophie. The Suite ends with the famous duet between the lovers that ends the opera.
Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2008
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