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Triple Concerto
November 3 & 4, 2007
Click on the  to hear the musical examples.
Aaron Jay Kernis
b.1960 |
NEW ERA DANCE
Aaron Jay Kernis b.1960
Self-taught on the violin, piano and in composition, Aaron Jay Kernis attended the San Francisco Conservatory, the Manhattan School of Music, and Yale University, working along the way with John Adams, Charles Wuorinen, Morton Subotnick, Bernard Rands and Jacob Druckman.
In the now-defunct schism between the serialists and the listening public, Kernis clearly sided with neither, carving out his own personal vision of what is beautiful, flowing seamlessly from moments of dissonance to moments of lyrical tonality. His style is eclectic, juxtaposing a variety of styles, including American popular and vernacular music. He was described by New York music critic Lawrence Cosentino as “...at or near the top of a list of young American composers who have made it safe for music lovers to return to the concert hall and enjoy new music that neither panders to nor alienates audiences.” His compositions have earned him many prizes and commissions, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for his String Quartet No.2. He currently serves as composer in residence for the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.
New Era Dance was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic for its 150th anniversary. It is a virtuosic piece for orchestra, reflecting the sounds the composer heard on the streets in his neighborhood, the Washington Heights section of New York.
New Era Dance is framed by a recurring passage resembling Bernstein’s “Mambo” from West Side Story.  It is a frenetic mélange of salsa and rap, mid-century jazz and disco, steel band and pseudo-folk all mixed with street noise topped by police sirens. It is episodic on structure, passing from one riff to another, featuring different combinations of instruments. In general, there is a raw violence to this piece, made more intense by the driving rhythm the dissonance and for which the sirens are an auditory metaphor.The title is taken from a World War I ragtime dance – although there are no signs of ragtime in the score itself. There are a couple of stunning surprises as well.
Ludwig van Beethoven
1770-1827 |
CONCERTO IN C MAJOR FOR PIANO, VIOLIN, CELLO AND ORCHESTRA, OP.56
Ludwig van Beethoven
By 1803-4, Ludwig van Beethoven had become Vienna’s favorite musician and felt confident enough to break away from the traditional Classical musical language so dear to the Viennese. He shocked his admirers with the “Eroica” Symphony, as did some of his piano music of the period, including like the “Waldstein” (Op. 53) and “Appasionata” (Op. 57) Sonatas. The self-confidence also extended to his choice of libretto for his only opera, Fidelio – a story of governmental misdeeds – which was sure to run afoul of the ever-present censor.
Dedicated to “…his serene highness Prince Lobkowitz,” Beethoven’s Concerto for Piano, Violin, Cello & Orchestra was composed during those years. There is no record of commission or of intended performers, but one theory is that it may have been for his fifteen year old pupil, Archduke Rudolph. Another theory, in light of the Concerto’s difficult cello part, is that it was intended for Anton Kraft (1749-1820), a superb cellist for whom Haydn composed his D Major Cello Concerto, and who by that time had settled in Vienna.
The Concerto was published in 1807 and premiered in 1808, although there may have earlier private performances. Its form harks back to the sinfonia concertante that was so popular in the second half of the eighteenth century, especially in France. Beethoven’s choice of instrumental combination, however, was unique, and he took special pains to balance the contrasting sonorities of the three soloists to avoid their overpowering one another. The public response was cool at best.
The Concerto is played less frequently than many of Beethoven’s other orchestral works in part because of the technical requirements for its performance and the cost of hiring three soloists. While it is often played by an established piano trio, it is important to recognize that it is not a concerto for trio and orchestra, but rather a work for three soloists. While neither the piano nor violin part offers unusual difficulties, Beethoven, with Olympian disregard, gave little consideration to the technical limitations of the cello, making it one of the most difficult parts in the repertoire.
The Concerto also does not have the emotional intensity or the momentum of Beethoven’s other concertos. This is especially true in the exposition and development section of the first movement, where Beethoven repeats the themes in new keys on the different instruments and instrument combinations rather than developing them. This approach, while unusual for Beethoven, was largely dictated by the necessity of giving each solo instrument equal time to expand on each of the three main themes in its own particular way, an issue that does not arise in a solo concerto. Beethoven also forgoes formal cadenzas, which would have been unwieldy with three solo instruments.
The Concerto opens directly with the first theme, but as a section solo for the basses; only towards the cadence do the rest of the strings enter in, giving a musical image of a sunrise.  The image is completed as the entire orchestra chimes in on its way to the second theme. A third theme, based on a little rhythmic figure from the first theme completes the exposition.
The Largo is a short lyrical movement with a single theme, first presented by the orchestra, followed by beautiful solos for each of the instruments, which vary the theme in slightly different ways. With minimal orchestral accompaniment, the soloists go on to play variations on the theme more in the style of a piano trio. The movement is actually an intermezzo, or transition, linking directly to the Finale. The bridge, however, is very long, building up considerable tension before finally resolving in the Finale. Beethoven used this effect in the Fifth Piano Concerto as well, in which instead of creating anticipation with over a minute of empty calories, he used the bridge to gradually introduce the notes of the main theme of the finale.
The rhythm of the rondo theme is that of a polonaise, hence the designation Rondo alla polacca. The movement is shaped like an arch; Beethoven pours out several new themes for the episodes between the refrain, then repeats them before the coda. Its already vivacious theme becomes more boisterous in the coda through a sudden change in tempo and rhythm.
Johannes Brahms
1833-1897 |
SYMPHONY No.1 IN C MINOR, Op.68
Johannes Brahms
“You don’t know what it is like always to hear that giant marching along behind me,” Brahms wrote to the conductor Hermann Levi, in reference to Beethoven. As a classically oriented composer who revered Beethoven, Brahms found that writing a symphony was a daunting proposition. It took fame, respectability, middle age and numerous false starts before he finally finished his First Symphony at age 43, after at least 14 years’ gestation. An earlier attempt at a symphony, in 1854, ended up, after numerous transformations, as part of the d minor Piano Concerto and the German Requiem.
Despite Brahms’s reputation and the positive anticipation of the public, the Symphony, premiered in 1876, was at first coolly received. The rigorous classical form baffled the public and critics, who expected something more romantic and innovative. Wagner, Liszt and programmatic music were all the rage and most critics considered the classical form backward looking and reactionary. But it was not long before the Symphony’s riveting power was recognized, along with its own contribution to symphonic innovation.
If, indeed, the First Symphony cannot strictly be considered program music, it nevertheless unfolds with great drama – even, one might say, a musical plot. While the typical classical symphony gave the greatest weight to the first movement, ending with a faster rousing finale, often a dance, Mozart – to some extent in his last three symphonies – and Beethoven recast the pattern in the Third, Fifth and especially the Ninth symphony. In these works, the finale provides the culmination to the entire symphony. When listening to Brahms’s First, one can easily imagine the composer’s reticence at treading in the great man’s shadow. Nevertheless, his combined sense for musical drama and structure prevailed as he launched what conductor Hans von Bülow called “The Tenth.” Only Mendelssohn in his Symphony No. 3, “The Scottish,” had trod that path.
The ominous pounding of the timpani under slow ascending and descending chromatic scales,  fragmentary motives and the ambiguous tonality of the Introduction poses a musical question – actually more of a demand – that remains unresolved until the final movement. It is one of the most spine-chilling introductions in all of classical music, made more so by the contrasting secondary theme, a trio for the oboe, flute and cellos – which, incidentally, is never heard again. The following Allegro fleshes out motives from the Introduction into a full-fledged theme, developing it with an almost savage energy that threatens to obscure the traditional sonata form. But Brahms was a classicist and introduces two new subsidiary themes into the Allegro, a gentle oboe theme, the mate to the one in the Introduction, followed by another stormy chromatic one with an ascending chromatic scale and its resulting tonal ambiguity, in keeping with the overall mood of the movement.
The middle two movements are a respite from the drive of the first, the Andante sostenuto second movement, a classic ABA form, is in E major, although with a highly modified repeat, reminiscent of Beethoven's variations in the slow movement of the Ninth Symphony. The theme of this movement is in two phrases, the first concluding with a motive that Brahms uses in different musical contexts throughout. The end of the second phrase recalls the opening of the Allegro in the first movement. The oboe solo is a mate to the solo for the same instrument in the introduction, beginning what becomes a pattern for Brahms in this symphony of foreshadowing and recalling motivic elements from movement to movement. Shortly afterwards, he hints at the main theme of the third movement to come in a brief duet for flute and oboe. All in all, it is lovely, albeit melancholy, and still fraught with the unresolved tension of the work as a whole.
The third movement, a modified scherzo, is more of an intermezzo, opening with a lilting clarinet theme, suggested already in the preceding movement. It does, however, include a trio. The contrapuntal accompaniment to the repeat of the clarinet theme, after the Trio section, foreshadows the principal theme from the Finale.
A rumbling timpani now returns us to the serious business of resolving the tensions raised in the first movement, and the resolution appears none too optimistic with its creeping pizzicato strings and sforzando appoggiaturas in the winds. This return to the mood of the first movement Allegro reminds us of the unresolved issues, but suddenly, as if from behind a cloud, an alpenhorn calls out, answered by the flute, turning the turgid c minor into a resounding C major chorale.
The alpenhorn solo has its own little history. In 1868, eight years before the Symphony was premiered, Brahms had quarreled with his friend, and probably secret love, Clara Schumann, about whether she should cut back on her concretizing to spend more time at home with her eight children. That September, he sent her a mollifying postcard with the alpenhorn theme scrawled on it to the words, ”High on the mountain, deep in the valley, I greet you a thousand fold.”
Of course, the introduction of the chorale tune is not the final statement. Brahms develops it and a series of subsidiary themes with emotional force, but with less brutality than the first movement. The chorale does battle with the music from the stormy introduction to emerge triumphant in an exultant coda, again reminiscent of Beethoven's excited finales.
Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2007
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