by David B. Levy, © 2021
Fanfare for the Vienna Philharmonic
Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss was born in Munich on June 11, 1864, and died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on September 8, 1949. He was not related to the Viennese Strauss family of waltz fame, although he composed some impressive waltzes that are incorporated in his larger works. A brilliant conductor and composer, Strauss first came to public attention as a composer because of his sensational symphonic poems composed during the 1880s. At the beginning of the 20th century Strauss turned his attention to the world of opera, shocking the operatic establishment with the high-powered sexuality and violence of Salomé (1905) and Elektra (1909). Strauss later chose somewhat less scandalous subjects for his operas, beginning with his first collaboration with the Austrian poet and playwright, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier (1911). Fanfare for the Vienna Philharmonic was composed in 1924 and had its premiere in the Golden Hall of Vienna’s famed Musikverein on March 4 of that year. The work is orchestrated for large brass ensemble and timpani.
As the Chautauqua Institution and its CSO emerge out of the shadow of the pandemic, the performance of a celebratory fanfare seems to be highly appropriate. Richard Strauss decided in 1919, after completing his “last romantic opera,” Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow) to leave Berlin in order to assume his new duties, shared with Franz Schalk, as director of the recently renamed Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera, its earlier name being the Hofoper or Court Opera). Select members of the orchestra of the Vienna State Opera also are members of the Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic), another major musical institution of the Austrian capital city. This ensemble was established in 1842 by Otto Nicolai. Richard Strauss’ association with the Vienna Philharmonic is legendary, dating back to 1882. Strauss conducted the orchestra frequently between 1906 and 1944, giving over one hundred performances together. Dated February 19, 1924, the Fanfare for the Vienna Phiharmonic was the result of a request from members of the orchestra while on a concert tour of South America in 1923. Their aim was to create a new work for the first ever Vienna Philharmonic Ball, an occasion whose aim was to raise money for the musician’s pension fund. It is performed on the same occasion every year since its premiere on March 4, 1924, and has become a highlight of Vienna’s Fasching (Carnaval) season.
Elegia Andina (Andean Elegy)
Gabriela Lena Frank
American pianist and composer Gabriela Lena Frank was born on September 26, 1972 in Berkeley, California. On her father’s side she inherited a Lithuanian Jewish heritage, while her mother was a Peruvian of Chinese descent. The parents met when her father served in the Peace Corps in Peru. Gabriela studied at Rice University in Houston, TX, where she earned her bachelor and master’s degrees. She was awarded a doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2001. Her teachers included Paul Cooper, William Albright, Leslie Bassett, William Balcom, Michael Daugherty, and Samuel Jones. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and Latin Grammy, she has been composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra. She resides in California’s Bay Area. Her Elegia Andina was composed in 2000 and is scored for pairs of woodwinds, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, strings, timpani, and percussion.
Gabriela Lena Frank is a musician with a deep social conscience, committed to multiple civic and educational causes, including her Creative Academy of Music in Boonville, CA. She describes herself as a Mestiza, and her musical identity reflects her mixed familial background. Many of her works are reflections of the culture of South America. As an individual who has coped with moderate hearing loss, she recently was interviewed by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, “I Think Beethoven Encoded His Deafness in his Music,” in a feature that appeared in the New York Times on December 27, 2020.
The composer wrote the following program notes about Elegia Andina:
Elegía Andina for Orchestra (2000) is dedicated to my older brother, Marcos Gabriel Frank. As children of a multicultural marriage (our father being Lithuanian-Jewish and our mother being Chinese-Peruvian-Spanish), our early days were filled with Oriental stir-fry cuisine, Andean nursery songs, and frequent visits from our New York-bred Jewish cousins. As a young piano student, my repertoire included not only my own compositions that carried overtones from Peruvian folk music but also rags of Scott Joplin and minuets by the sons of Bach. It is probably inevitable then that as a composer and pianist today, I continue to thrive on multiculturalism. Elegía Andina (Andean Elegy) is one of my first written-down compositions to explore what it means to be of several ethnic persuasions, of several minds. It uses stylistic elements of Peruvian arca/ira zampoña panpipes (double-row panpipes, each row with its own tuning) to paint an elegiac picture of my questions. The flute part was particularly conceived with this in mind but was also inspired by the technical and musical mastery of Floyd Hebert, principal flutist of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. In addition, as already mentioned, I can think of none better to dedicate this work to than to "Babo," my big brother — for whom Perú still waits.
Symphony no. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60
Ludwig van Beethoven
One of history’s pivotal composers, Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 15 or 16, 1770 in Bonn, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. His Symphony no. 4 was composed in 1806 and received its first public performance at Vienna’s Burgtheater on November 17, 1807. The work is dedicated to the Silesian Count Franz von Oppersdorff, who boasted his own private orchestra. The Symphony is scored for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Beethoven’s musical imagination kicked into high gear after the completion the Eroica Symphony of 1803-04. The crisis of the Heiligenstadt Testament now behind him, the composer’s “new path” of composition was rife with ideas for future projects. Beethoven has left us a rare verbal testimony of his renewed self-confidence: “Just as you plunge yourself here [Vienna] into the whirlpool of society, so in spite of all social obstacles it is possible for you to write operas. Your deafness shall be a secret no more, even where art is involved!” Evidence from the composer’s sketchbooks from this period clearly indicates that many ideas were pressing soon after the 1805 premiere of the Eroica, including the early stages for what eventually would mature into a symphony in C minor (no. 5, the completion of which was delayed to 1808) as well as ideas that found their way into the “Pastoral” Symphony. There is no evidence yet, however, of any thoughts for what would become the Fourth Symphony. The period spanning the spring of 1806 to the end of 1808 became one of the most productive of Beethoven’s career. The year 1806 alone gave birth to the Piano Sonata in F minor, op. 57 (“Appassionata”), the Piano Concerto no. 4 in G major, op. 58, three String Quartets, op. 59 (“Razumovsky”), the Symphony no. 4, op. 60, and the Violin Concerto, op. 61.
Count Franz von Oppersdorff, the dedicatee of the Fourth Symphony, was, along with Beethoven’s loyal patron, Prince Lobkowitz, one of those few wealthy aristocrats with whom Beethoven engaged who continued to maintain his own orchestra (Hauskapelle). After hearing a performance of the Second Symphony at the Count’s palace at Grätz bei Troppau (now Opava) in Silesia, Beethoven agreed to dedicate a new one—originally he had the Fifth Symphony in mind—for the Silesian nobleman. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Beethoven delayed work on the Fifth Symphony, and turned instead to a new symphony in B-flat Major, a project consumed the next several months.
Interestingly, the first performance of the Fourth Symphony, a concert that included Symphonies nos. 1-3, the Fourth Piano Concerto, op. 58 and the Overture to Heinrich Collin’s tragedy, Coriolan, op. 62), and a selection of arias from Leonore took place on March, 1807 not at Oppersdorff’s palace, however, but at that of Prince Lobkowitz’s palace in Vienna. The first public performance took place at Vienna’s Burgtheater on November 15, 1807, followed by another hearing on December 27 as one in a series of Amateur Concerts at the old University Hall. Strangely, there is no surviving evidence that Oppersdorff’s orchestra ever performed the Fourth Symphony.
One of the most oft-cited characterizations of the Fourth Symphony comes from the pen of Robert Schumann, who dubbed it a “slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants.” This gendered reference has fed into the idea that Beethoven’s even-numbered symphonies are somehow weaker or inferior to the more “masculine” odd-numbered ones. Even more problematic is the notion that the work represents a regression back to the sphere of influence of Haydn and Mozart. That the Fourth is shorter and lighter in spirit than the Eroica is but to state a truism that merely skims the surface. Recent research places the nature of the Fourth into clearer perspective, showing that Haydn’s Symphony no. 102 in B-flat Major (Hob. I:102) is the principal model for Beethoven’s symphony in the same key.
The similarities in points of detail are out-weighed however, by the differences. That Beethoven turned back to Haydnesque models was partly spurred by the publisher, Breitkopf & Härtel’s decision in 1806 to foster and capitalize on a laudatory celebration of the career of the aging master, who was feted by one and all as having earned his place among of the great masters of Austro-German music history. Haydn adulation in Vienna reached its zenith with the celebratory performance of Die Schöpfung on March 27, 1808 in the University Hall, an event attended by Beethoven, as well as the rest of Vienna’s musical elite. But Beethoven’s compositional direction in 1806 was well beyond the point where a true return to any imitation of the style and syntax of his former teacher was possible. Viewed in this light, the seemingly retrospective attributes of the Fourth Symphony could be viewed as a signal from the younger composer of what the future of the symphony could be, while still rooted in its past. It could also be seen as Beethoven’s message to Breitkopf & Härtel, the firm that had severely criticized the Eroica Symphony a few years earlier in the pages of its influential magazine, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, that he was not headed in a direction unintelligible to his audiences. As Beethoven commented about his revolutionary “Razumovsky” String Quartets, Op. 59, “Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age!”
But symphonies were not created for some future connoisseurs. They were, rather, public works written for, and to be experienced and enjoyed by, audiences of his own time. Beethoven was keenly aware of this difference. His Symphony no. 4, albeit based on older models, represents a clear step forward in the composer’s development. Devoid of overt “heroism,” its athleticism and, as Donald Francis Tovey observed, mastery of rhythmic motion, cannot be denied.
