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Brahms for Two

Concerto for Violin and Cello in A Minor, Op. 102

Johannes Brahms
b. Hamburg, Germany / May 7, 1833; d. Vienna, Austria / April 3, 1897

Like Beethoven before him, Brahms believed that concertos and symphonies should possess equal depth and value. Not for him the flashy, empty solo vehicles written by many composers of his day. Each of his four concertos – two for piano, one for violin, and one for violin and cello – is a substantial work drawn on a large canvas. Unlike most Romantic concertos, they ask as much of their soloists’ intelligence and humanity as their fingers.

Brahms and Joseph Joachim, the esteemed violinist, conductor and composer, enjoyed a close and productive friendship. Brahms consulted closely with Joachim during the composition of his Violin Concerto, then dedicated it to him. Joachim figured in another Brahms concerto, the one fated to be the last (it is also Brahms’ final work for orchestra).

Not long after the premiere of the Violin Concerto in 1879, Joachim’s marriage came to an end. Brahms decided to take Mrs. Joachim’s side in the split, thus alienating his friend. After several years of painful separation, Brahms set out to create a musical gesture of reconciliation. During the summer of 1887, he composed this double concerto for violin and cello, with Joachim specifically in mind. Joachim decided to accept this musical apology, although observers noted that he and Brahms never again achieved the same degree of camaraderie they had enjoyed prior to their split. The first performance took place in Cologne on October 15, 1887. Brahms conducted, with Joachim and cellist Robert Hausmann as soloists.

There have been numerous examples of concertos for more than one solo instrument, especially during the Baroque and Classical periods. Nineteenth-century multiple concertos are far rarer, and none rivals Brahms’ for substance. His vast skill allowed him to create a work that fully explores the expressive personalities of the two quite different featured instruments, within an orchestral framework of typical richness and strength.

Continuing in the tradition of his other concertos, the first movement contains the lion’s share of the drama. The second is sweet and songful. Brahms concludes the Concerto with another of the Hungarian or Gypsy flavored rondos that he created for several other major scores, the Violin Concerto and Piano Quartet in G Minor among them. This example is serious enough to complement the preceding movements.

Symphony NO. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47

Dmitry Shostakovich
b. St. Petersburg, Russia / September 25, 1906; d. Moscow, Russia / August 9, 1975

As time passes it becomes ever more clear that Shostakovich was one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers. The best of his monumental symphonies and intense string quartets are powerful human documents that are already standing the test of time. Statistics compiled by the League of American Orchestras for the 2006-2007 season place him as the fifth most performed of all composers, trailing only Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky.

Early in his career, he truly seemed to be the Soviet Union’s brightest musical beacon. His brash, confident Symphony No. 1, his graduation exercise from the Leningrad Conservatory, quickly made its way around the world. In the years following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Soviet bureaucrats permitted their composers to create the kinds of modernistic, individual musical statements that artists in other lands were producing. By the late `20s, however, they began to insist that composers stick to party doctrine by writing easily intelligible, emotionally uplifting works designed to inspire the masses in support of the state. Shostakovich’s Second and Third Symphonies contain unusual, experimental elements. He was just able to avoid censure by keeping their primary focus political.

All that changed, swiftly and dramatically, in 1936, when his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District came under official fire as the sort of personalized, pessimistic music that the country’s composers ought not to be writing. Overnight Shostakovich became persona non grata. He recognized how crucial the reaction to his next symphony, No. 5, would be. Failure would most likely result in his “disappearance,” like those befalling countless victims of Stalinist purges.

Yevgeny Mravinsky conducted the premiere in Leningrad on November 21, 1937, and it won a resoundingly positive reception. Some officials voiced suspicions regarding the sincerity of this symphonic apology, but their concerns were rapidly drowned in a sea of praise. Early in 1938, after the Symphony had firmly entrenched itself, the composer broke his silence regarding his intentions by writing (or having his name unknowingly attached to the following): “The theme of my Symphony is the making of a man. I saw man with all his experiences at the center of the composition...In the Finale the tragically tense impulses of the earlier movements are resolved in optimism and the joy of living.”

Testimony, the book of memoirs that was published after his death, offered a much different view, especially regarding the seemingly triumphant Finale: “The rejoicing is forced, created under threat. It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, ‘Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,’ and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, ‘Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.’ What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.”

If Testimony is to be believed, in the Fifth Symphony Shostakovich pulled off the dangerous gambit of criticizing the repressive, hypocritical Soviet state without the authorities realizing it. Further reinforcement for this point of view came from his close friend and musical colleague, Mstislav Rostropovich: “The end (of the Symphony) is irreparable tragedy. Stretched on the rack of the inquisition the victim still tries to smile in his pain. The hearers of the first performance could identify with that person. Anybody who thinks the Finale is glorification is an idiot – yes, it is a triumph for idiots.”

Is the concluding section “triumphant”? Much depends on the conductor’s approach. At a fast tempo, the coda of the Finale does indeed sound positive, even festive. At a slow pace, it becomes a hollow, agonized funeral march.

More important than finding a “definitive” answer to this uncertainty is to appreciate the searing portrayal of human suffering that Shostakovich offers in the third movement. This is the heart and soul of the piece. Its sincerity – as attested by the weeping of the of audience at the premiere – is unassailable.

The first movement opens with the starkest and simplest of dramatic gestures. After much desolate rumination, momentarily brightened by themes on violins and solo flute, a raging emotional tempest is launched by a harsh, machine-like tread in the depths of the orchestra, including piano. Once this blazing, goose-stepping hurricane has blown itself out, the quasi-optimistic flute theme reappears, but only briefly.

The following scherzo-like movement is ripe with grotesquery and satire. With its heavy-footed dance rhythms and intentionally schmaltzy violin solo, it demonstrates Shostakovich’s strong affinity with Mahler, whose music he had been studying for more than a decade. After the tragic third movement, the Finale opens in a mood of defiance. In the wake of a powerful central climax, something of the opening movement’s wistfulness returns. Then comes the conclusion. See what it says to you.

Program Notes by Don Anderson (c) 2008

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