Master pianist Emanuel Ax—one of the most renowned artists of our time and a long-time collaborator with NWS—returns for an extraordinary evening at the Arsht Center. Beethoven’s grandiose concerto would be his last, but is overflowing with majestic moments, including its utterly sublime second movement. Bartók’s rollicking dances with their gushing, nationalistic energy prove a fitting introduction to Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony. Said to be his finest, it bursts of Czech spirit with brooding political and emotional strife deeply felt in each phrase, giving voice to his hope that it would “move the world.” Leading the incredible evening is celebrated Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, Musical America’s 2014 Conductor of the Year. 

Program

Béla Bartók

Dance Suite (1923)
Approximate duration: 16 minutes

Bartók’s composing slowed to a trickle in the early 1920s, displaced by his work in the new field of ethnomusicology and his resurgent career as a pianist. The only piece he composed in 1923 was the Dance Suite, commissioned for a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the merging of Buda, Pest and Óbuda to form the capital city Budapest. Bartók wrote only one more work in the next two years, until a 1925 performance of the Dance Suite at an international festival in Prague catapulted him back into the limelight as a composer. The suite received more than 60 performances around Europe and the United States in the following two years and the surge of attention shook Bartók out of his semi-retirement as a composer.

The Dance Suite shows how effectively Bartók united his passion for folk music with modern trends in art music. In an article about the relationship between those two musical worlds, Bartók wrote, “The opposition of the two tendencies reveals all the more clearly the individual properties of each, while the effect of the whole becomes all the more powerful.” The suite’s opening movement is austere at first, dwelling in a modern sound world of chromatic melodies, fractured rhythms and chunky chords built from stacked seconds, fourths and fifths.

Near the end, a long harp glissando shifts the scene to a folk-like violin melody supported by tranquil accompaniment.

The second movement enters immediately with an aggressive figure at a faster Allegro molto tempo. The insistent oscillation of the melody at the interval of a minor third suggests the taunting motive used by children around the globe, especially in the playful slides at the phrase endings.

This movement also ends with a harp transition and a new spin on the dreamy, folk-infused melody heard earlier.

The modal themes and droning harmonies of the Allegro vivace third movement are direct outgrowths of Bartók’s pioneering research as an ethnomusicologist, through which he recorded and transcribed many thousands of folk melodies from Hungary, Romania and beyond. The subdued fourth movement, marked Molto tranquillo, explores a different side of the folk tradition with sinuous woodwind phrases intoned in naked octaves. The recurring slow melody makes another brief appearance at the end, leading directly into the short but tense fifth movement.

The finale builds a long, cascading crescendo, reaching a brass outburst that layers chromatic and modal themes in a volley of counterpoint. Traces of material return from earlier movements, including the slow violin motto once more. Out of that quiet, a viola solo begins the climb to an energetic conclusion.

 

Additional Resources

PDF score from the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library

History of the ethnomusicology research that Bartók pioneered along with Zoltán Kodály

History of Budapest, the city commemorated in Bartók’s Dance Suite

 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 73, "Emperor" (1809)
Approximate duration: 38 minutes

In the summer of 1809, Napoleon’s army occupied Vienna for the second time in four years. Beethoven, unlike most of his friends and patrons, remained in the city, and he passed the miserable season with little contact with the outside world. He spent some of that time finishing the Fifth Piano Concerto, his final and most substantial work in the genre. It would also be the only concerto he did not perform himself, given the deteriorated state of his hearing by the time of the 1811 premiere in Leipzig.

Beethoven’s early symphonies and concertos built upon the Classical traditions of Haydn and Mozart. The work with which Beethoven eclipsed all symphonic precedents (at least in terms of sheer size) was the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, from 1803, nicknamed “Eroica” (Italian for “heroic”). The Piano Concerto No. 5, also in the key of E-flat, is in many ways a sibling to the “Eroica” Symphony. In the case of the concerto, Beethoven had no part in the nickname—“Emperor” came later from an English publisher—but both works share a monumental posture and a triumphant spirit. Beethoven dedicated the concerto to the Archduke Rudolph, the youngest brother of the Austrian emperor Franz. More than just a patron, Rudolph was a piano student of Beethoven’s and the two maintained a warm friendship until the composer’s death.

The “Emperor” Concerto begins at a climax: the orchestra proclaims the home key with a single chord, and the piano leaps in with a virtuosic cadenza.

The ensemble holds back its traditional exposition of the thematic arguments until the pianist completes three of these fanciful solo flights, the last connecting directly to the start of the movement’s primary theme.

It is a remarkable structure for a concerto, with an assurance of victory, as it were, before the battle lines have been drawn. Even once the piano returns, the movement continues in a symphonic demeanor, forgoing a standalone cadenza in favor of solo escapades that integrate deftly into the forward progress of the form.

The slow movement enters in the luminous and unexpected key of B major with a simple theme, first stated as a chorale for muted strings.

The piano plays a decorated version over pizzicato accompaniment, and woodwinds later intone the same theme, supported by piano filigree and off-beat string pulses.

The transition back to the home key for the finale is brilliantly understated: the held note B drops to B-flat, providing a smooth lead-in for the piano to introduce the principal theme of the Rondo.

The motive’s upward arpeggio generates extra propulsion through its unexpected climax on an accented off-beat, adding a dash of Haydn’s humor to a score that has all the power and majesty of Beethoven in his prime.

 

Additional Resources

PDF score from the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library

Page from Beethoven’s manuscript for the Piano Concerto No. 5

Audio program on the Fifth Piano Concerto from the BBC

 

 

Antonín Dvořák

Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 (1885)
Approximate duration: 38 minutes

Dvořák was born in a small Bohemian village, where his zither-playing father was the local butcher and innkeeper. Over time, Dvořák’s devotion to his Czech musical roots would be seen as a defining virtue, but for years he battled prejudice that he was not an “international” composer—that is to say, one who worked squarely within the German-Austrian musical language. Ironically, he found freedom to be a Czech composer by working outside of Central Europe, most famously from 1892 to 1895 in the United States, where he wrote his Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”). 

Before America, Dvořák had a tremendous run in England, starting with the acclaimed London premiere of Stabat Mater in 1883. An English-language cantata, The Spectre’s Bride, followed in 1884 and another major vocal work for English audiences premiered in 1886, the oratorio St. Ludmila. Between those two offerings, Dvořák had the opportunity to compose a new symphony for the Royal Philharmonic Society, which had named him an honorary member. To be asked to compose for the same group that had commissioned such symphonies as Beethoven’s Ninth and Mendelssohn’s “Italian” was a tremendous honor, and it marked a turning point in Dvořák’s professional career. When his publishing agent Simrock offered a scant 3,000 marks for the symphony, Dvořák convinced them to double the rate on the basis of his newfound fame and interest from competing publishers. The work first appeared as Symphony No. 2 based on order of publication, but it was actually the seventh symphony that Dvořák wrote. 

Working in the symphonic mold of Beethoven and Brahms, Dvořák shaped the Symphony No. 7 into one his most cohesive and structurally integrated compositions. The first movement reveals a striking economy of motives, seizing on characteristic fragments of themes and hammering at them insistently. 

The triplet time signature of 6/8 and a Brahms-like fascination with misaligned rhythms contribute to the kinetic intensity. 

The second movement beings with a chorale treatment of a beguiling tune in F major. 

The harmony strays into the darker territory of F minor and back again throughout the form, withholding a full respite from the turbulence of the surrounding movements. 

The Scherzo returns to the home key of D minor, although the flowing waltz-tinged music is more devilish than tragic. As in the first movement, a triplet meter (this time 6/4, or six quarter-notes per measure) provides a launch pad for energizing syncopations. 

The Finale progresses in a state of heightened tension, exploiting long pedal tones and more of that Beethoven-like obession on a small collection of motives. 

The Symphony does finally resolve to a hard-earned D major, blasting through lingering echoes of the earlier angst. 

 

Additional Resources 

PDF score from the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library 

Audio program on the Seventh Symphony from the BBC 

Description and manuscript images on an extensive Czech website devoted to Dvořák 

-- Copyright © 2016 Aaron Grad 

Aaron Grad is a composer, guitarist and writer based in Seattle. Besides providing program notes for the New World Symphony, he has been the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s program annotator since 2005 and also contributes notes to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Seattle Symphony.

Audio clips provided by Naxos of America, Inc.