Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1

Beethoven's famous Pastoral Symphony from 1808 is just one of countless works, both large and small, found throughout the entire Western canon in which composers have celebrated the beauty and drama of nature. One need only start a short list (Schubert's Trout, Mendelssohn's Hebrides, Smetana's Moldau, Strauss's Blue Danube, Saint-Sean's Carnival, to name but a few) to realize the apparent abundance and diversity of classical music's odes to nature. In our own time, Olivier Messiaen has done arguably more than any other composer to draw our attention to the greatest songsters on the planet, namely birds.

Having recently moved back to Australia after more than fifteen years in Germany, I'm acutely aware of the incredible source of joy and beauty, not to mention the resource of invention, that is to be found just by opening the windows and listening. Definitely no surprises on my part to read of Messiaen's utter fascination with the Antipodes and to find kookaburras and magpies popping up plentifully in his scores.

Butin wishing to celebrate this wonderful abundance of treasures in the present day, I, for one, find it increasingly difficult to separate my love of the sounds of the natural world from an immense and growing sense of loss. Consider our relentless and respectless rampaging through the world's forests and wilderness areas, all in the name of more shopping, freeways, carparks, and convenience. These issues are sadly a part of daily life in Australia. Sure, we all “love” nature, but what we love more are all the trappings of modern living … certainly more than the desire to stop and bask in the glory of a single butcherbird, perhaps the most magical sound found on the whole Australian continent. This piece, then, is about glorious birdsong, the threat that it faces, the loss, and the soulless noise that we're left with when they're all gone.

© Brett Dean 2000

First performance: February 9, 2001. First SPCO performance: these concerts. Instrumentation: flute doubling piccolo, oboe, two clarinets doubling bass clarinet, bassoon, contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets, trombone, tuba, two percussion, piano, keyboard sampler, CD player, and strings. Three winds double on flexatone.

Brahms met Robert Schumann in 1853 through a mutual friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. Schumann advocated for his new protégé in the article “Neue Bahnen” (“New Paths”), declaring that Brahms was “destined to give ideal expression to the times.” The following year, after Schumann’s leap into the Rhine River and confinement to an insane asylum, Brahms moved to Düsseldorf to help manage the Schumann household and care for the children while Robert’s wife Clara supported the family playing concert tours. In the two years Brahms spent as the de facto head of the Schumann household, he developed a deep (and not entirely platonic) affection for Clara, fourteen years his senior.

After Schumann’s death in 1856, Brahms left his strange domestic situation and entered a period of soul searching and renewed study. He did not publish any music for the next four years, and performed only sporadically at the piano. While supporting himself by teaching and conducting, he labored over a piano concerto he would dedicate to Clara, studied counterpoint and other musical styles of the past, and challenged himself to experiment in new forms. Each year from 1857 to 1859, he spent a few months conducting a choir and offering piano lessons in Detmold; it was there that he wrote two Serenades, using as his guide the Classical-era tradition of lighthearted music for evening gatherings. The Serenade No. 1 in D Major (1857-58) existed in a version for nine players, until Brahms expanded the scoring to chamber orchestra in 1860. The Serenade No. 2 in A Major (1858-59) also used less than a full orchestral complement, omitting violins.

The Serenades were important laboratories for Brahms. Free of the gravitas of symphonies (a form that flummoxed him for decades) but extending beyond the small-scale comfort zone of solo piano music and songs (genres that dominated his early output), these fruitful trials in large-ensemble writing brought forward the full potential Schumann had seen years earlier. Brahms arranged for performances and publication of both Serenades in 1860, and from that year forward he composed with the fluidity and self-confidence that had previously eluded him.

The Serenade No. 2 owes much of its personality to its instrumentation. Removing the saturated hue of violins clears more space for the transparent and breezy woodwind choir, and also allows the warm and throaty violas to occupy wider sonic territory. The orchestration emphasizes the connection to the outdoor bands from serenades past, and much of the musical material has an antique patina, as in the simple chorale that begins the work. Signs of Brahms’ progressive voice soon emerge in propulsive, superimposed rhythmic layers and phrases stretched across bar-lines.

Brahms’ reckoning with the past fuels the three central movements. A tidy Scherzo opens into an unexpectedly broad and luminous Trio section, powered by a churning alternation between violas and cellos; the somber, Baroque-tinged opening of the Adagionon troppo provides the raw material for a lush and haunting core; the Quasi menuetto balances naïve dance music (perhaps the measured steps of someone learning to dance) with a contrasting section that builds a halting and spooky melody. The Rondo finale has something of a hunting character in the style of Haydn, adding a piccolo to contribute extra brightness and shimmer. The entire Serenade maintains contact with history, but Brahms’ subtle touches in the scoring and phrasing keep the music fresh and assured.

© Aaron Grad

First performance: February 10, 1860 in Hamburg. First SPCO performance: March 30, 1974. Most recent SPCO performance: October 18-19, 1996. Instrumentation: two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, violas, cellos, and double basses.

Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna in 1792 with the express purpose of studying composition with Haydn. The twenty-one-year-old firebrand quickly established himself as a keyboard virtuoso, filling the absence left by Mozart’s death only a year earlier. Beethoven’s early compositions showcased his performing talents, with twenty-one of his first twenty-seven published works (culminating with the Piano Concerto No. 1) involving piano.

Despite its numbering, the Piano Concerto in C Major was not Beethoven’s first. After some early attempts that failed to reach fruition, his first real concerto was the one in B-flat, begun in 1788 and completed in 1795. The C-Major concerto followed in 1795, and it is likely the work the Beethoven performed that December at a charity concert in Vienna. He played it again in 1798 in Prague, and unveiled a revised version at a major debut concert in Vienna in 1800. Beethoven then sent the freshly polished C-major concerto to his publisher a few months ahead of the older B-flat work, thus fixing the catalog sequence as we know it today.

The Allegro con brio first movement is a fresh and energetic statement in the Mozart mold. Signs of Beethoven’s voice do stand out, as in the insistent use of the long-short-short-long rhythmic motive (a foretaste of his obsessive treatment of the Fifth Symphony’s “fate” motive, among others). One dark streak that runs through this generally sunny C-major work is a tendency toward C minor and its expanded spectrum of key areas and pitches, especially E-flat and A-flat. The second movement, in A-flat, opens with a very slow long-short-short-long rhythm in the accompaniment, confirming a link to the first movement. The dark warmth of the key is reinforced by an orchestration that excludes the brighter flute, oboes, trumpets and timpani and instead features prominent clarinet lines. The rondo finale returns to a less complicated world of C-major harmony, but its slightly asymmetrical mix of six- and four-measure phrases in the first theme provides a running source of playfulness and surprise.

© Aaron Grad

First performance December 18, 1795 in Vienna, with Beethoven as soloist.