About the Program

Notes by David B. Levy

Max Bruch Concerto no. 1 in G minor for Violin and Orchestra, op. 26

(Christian Friedrich) Max Bruch was born January 6, 1838 in Cologne. He died October 2, 1920 at Friedenau (near Berlin). His Concerto no. 1 for Violin was first sketched in 1857 and was completed in 1866 in Koblenz. It was first performed by Otto von Königslow with the composer conducting on April 24, 1866 at a benefit concert in Koblenz of the Evangelical Women’s Society. Bruch revised it in the next year. This final version was given its first performance by the celebrated violinist, composer, and friend of Johannes Brahms, Joseph Joachim, on January 5, 1868. It is scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

A child prodigy, Max Bruch won the Frankfurt Mozart-Stiftung Prize when he was only fourteen years old. He was a composer of extremely wide range, devoting his efforts largely to works for chorus and stage, including three operas. The largest body of his work was devoted to sacred and secular choral compositions, and he also wrote several songs for voice and piano. Bruch was a gifted conductor and teacher (Ottorino Respighi and Ralph Vaughan Williams were among his composition pupils). Among the positions he held were the post of music director at Koblenz and Sondershausen. He held conducting posts in Berlin, Liverpool, and Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). He ended his career as director of a masterclass in composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. It is curious that his fame today rests almost entirely on one piece, his Violin Concerto no. 1, op. 26 (he composed three, and considered his second to be the best of them). Cellists have Bruch to thank for his fine setting of the sacred Jewish chant, Kol nidrei. Even though Bruch was an admirable composer of melodies in his own right, his fondness for folk tunes of different peoples absorbed his attention. Despite the fact that the violin was not his instrument, Bruch’s fondness for the instrument produced no fewer than nine concerted works, including the folksong-inspired Scottish Fantasy, composed in 1879/80 for the Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate.

When Bruch sent his Concerto no. 1 to Joseph Joachim for the violinist’s advice and criticism, the composer opined that his work ought to be called a Fantasy rather than a Concerto. Joachim disagreed, eventually praising Bruch’s Concerto for its richness and seductive qualities. Its first movement, Prelude—Allegro moderato, begins with a soft timpani roll, followed by a short pleading figure in the woodwinds leading to a rhapsodic, cadenza-like statement by the soloist. These ideas are sequenced on a higher pitch level and more hopeful major key. This, however, turns back to the minor mode and leads to a more forceful statement of the wind figure. After a vamp is established, the main body of the movement ensues with an exciting and passionate statement made by the soloist, filled with arpeggios and forceful chords. A lyrical new tune is presented and expanded upon, after which the soloist elaborates on its earlier ideas. The orchestra gets caught up in the excitement of the moment. As this dies down, the violin solo resumes in the spirit of the movement’s opening material.

Only by the time the central Adagio begins without any break, do we realize that Bruch was right in labeling the first movement a “Prelude.” The soaring Adagio, as we soon come to understand, forms the heart and soul of this piece. The finale (Allegro energico) begins in a high-spirited gypsy style in the brighter key of G major. Its double stops may have inspired Johannes Brahms, whose only Violin Concerto (composed in 1878) also had significant ties with Joachim. No less memorable than the finale’s gypsy element is yet another intensely lyrical theme—a certain reminder that tunefulness lies at the heart of this most melodiously blessed of Romantic violin concertos. Even the faster coda, with all of its virtuosity, cannot erase Bruch’s dominant lyrical impulse.

Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 4 in G Major

Composer and Conductor, Gustav Mahler was born May 7, 1860 in Kalischt, near Iglau [now Kaliště, Jihlava], Bohemia and died May 18, 1911 in Vienna. His Symphony No. 4 was first performed in Munich on November 25, 1901. It is scored for 4 flutes (2 piccolos), 3 oboes (1 English horn), 3 clarinets (1 E-flat clarinet, 1 bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (1 contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, timpani, sleighbells, cymbals, glockenspiel, triangle, tam-tam, bass drum, harp, strings, and soprano soloist in the finale.

The fourth of Mahler’s nine completed symphonies was begun in the summer of 1899 and completed the next year. It received its first performance on November 25, 1901 in Munich, where it met with vicious criticsm. Its Viennese premiere occurred in 1902. On that occasion the audience was deeply divided between opponents and enthusiasts. The work is in four movements and takes less than one hour to perform—a stark contrast to the more than 90 minutes it takes to perform Mahler’s Symphony no. 3.

“My time will yet come,” said the famous conductor/composer about the fate of his compositions. “One need not be present when one becomes immortal.” In retrospect, these comments have proven to be remarkably prophetic. Mahler’s time has come. The truth of this statement has been borne out by the veritable explosion of interest in his songs and symphonies since the 1960s. Part of this interest may be attributed to the persistent enthusiasm of Leonard Bernstein, but credit is due to conductors of an earlier generation—especially Willem Mengelberg and Mahler’s disciple, Bruno Walter—who championed his music, often in the face of a hostile public and unsympathetic critics. By now Mahler’s symphonies have become a staple of the orchestral canon.

Mahler’s music represents both a beginning and an end. The fin-de-siecle world in which he lived and worked was politically and ideologically falling apart, and it is hardly coincidental that Mahler and Freud were children of the same epoch. Mahler knew the “psychological man,” but still yearned for a purer innocence of the earlier Romantic era. This yearning was graphically demonstrated by his profound interest in the collection of folk poetry amassed by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano around 1808 and published under the title Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). Mahler responded to the Wunderhorn anthology by setting several of these German-Austrian folk poems to music for voice and orchestra. They also found their way into Mahler’s symphonies. The Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies each contain one movement in which a vocal-orchestral setting of a Wunderhorn poem can be found.

In the case of the Symphony No.4, the Wunderhorn poem is the basis for the work’s last, and shortest, movement. The poem in question is an alleged Bavarian folksong entitled “Der Himmel hängt voll Geigen,” (later retitled, “Das himmlische Leben” [Heavenly Life]). Mahler gives this text a charming setting for soprano and orchestra. Interestingly, this poem and its setting was under consideration to become the finale of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and listeners familiar with both works will note thematic connections between them. “Das himmlische Leben” also has a poetic antithesis in the Arnim and Brentano anthology. This poem is called “Das irdische Leben,” (Earthly Life), and Mahler’s setting of it forms part of his Wunderhorn cycle. This song tells the grim story of poverty as a hungry child begs its mother for food. Each plea for food is deflected by the mother, who beseeches the child to be patient. Sadly, she waits too long, and by the time the bread is ready, the child has died of starvation.

“Das himmlische Leben,” by contrast, describes a heavenly banquet as a child might envision it. But even here, the text is not without its disturbing moments. Why, for example, is the “butcher Herod” lying in wait for the lamb, or St. Luke slaughtering an ox? The benevolent sleighbells from the first movement turn menacing as each scene is described. But all turns to bliss and dream as the text ends with a depiction of Saint Ceclia’s heavenly court music.

The three movements that precede the finale, each in its own way, point toward the naive vision of life in heaven. Mahler achieves this through a network of thematic interrelations among the four movements which the careful listener can apprehend. The sound of sleighbells that open the first movement, as mentioned above, return in the finale. But there are other links. An unusual feature of the second movement (In gemächlicher Bewegung) is the spectral quality of the solo violin, whose strings are deliberately mistuned a whole step higher than normal—an effect known as scordatura. The resulting sound evokes a medieval fiddle. The third movement is one of Mahler’s most sublime creations, a Poco adagio marked Ruhevoll (Restful). Near its end, Mahler reveals, in a blaze of glory, a foreshadowing of “Das himmlische Leben” in the horns.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 contains some of his loveliest melodic ideas. As is typical of his style, these melodies are placed into sharp juxtaposition with brilliant, nervous passages of orchestral counterpoint, abrupt modulations, and unusual instrumental colors. Mahler’s experience as a master conductor is witnessed by the meticulous detail etched into every instruction to conductor and performer that permeates the score. Less “cosmic” in scope than many of his other works, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony has taken its place as the one by which his music, aesthetic, and philosophy is most easily approached.