Subscription Concerts 2024-2025Program B
No. 2017 Subscription (Program B)

A born and bred Viennese, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) enrolled in 1808 the Stadtkonvikt (imperial seminary) as a musical wonder boy. He studied composition there under the Italian composer Antonio Salieri (1750–1825) who was the Viennese Court’s music director. Both before and after entering the teaching profession in 1814, Schubert composed in an astonishingly prolific manner as if he knew his fate to die young.
Another Italian figure had then a great influence on the obscure young musician: ever since the operas of Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) were introduced to Vienna in 1816, his popularity in this capital of music grew fast to create the so-called “Rossini Rummel (Rossini craze)” by the early 1820s. Schubert, firmly rooted in the tradition of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, was not an exception to this southern trend. Good examples of this are his two orchestral Overtures in the Italian Style and Symphony No. 6 Little C major, which were all penned in 1817 when he was twenty.
The character of the Overture No. 2 in C major reveals itself early at the Rossinian slow introduction. The main Allegro section has the skipping first theme presented softly by the first violins, then the languid second theme has a dramatic gradual increase in volume reminding us of the famous “Rossini crescendo.” Although “in the Italian style” of the title is not by Schubert himself, the work indeed crosses southern borders spiritedly.

[Kumiko Nishi]

The German composer and music critic Robert Schumann (1810–1856) is one of the flag-bearers of early Romanticism in music alongside Mendelssohn and Liszt. Schumann also saved Schubert’s monumental symphony (The Great D. 944) from oblivion and arranged for its first public performance (1839), which led to proper evaluations of the Viennese master devalued up until then.
Piano was the instrument Schumann knew in detail as he had intended to become a pianist. A serious finger injury caused by excessive practice turned him to composition, while Clara Wieck, whom he married in 1840, was one of the most eminent pianists of the 19th century.
The first movement of Schumann’s Piano Concerto op. 54 was originally born in 1841 as Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra. He revised it and added to it the graceful slow movement and the splendid finale in rondo form (performed continuously without pause) to complete his Piano Concerto in 1845. Not unexpectedly, Clara served as the soloist at the first performance the next year in Leipzig.
A novelty of the work resides in the first sonata movement retaining the trace of the initial “Fantasy,” more concretely its loose sonata design and fantastic, improvisatory nature. Directly after the piano bursts at the opening of the concerto, the oboe hints at Clara’s nickname (Chiara/Chiarina) giving the four-note motif (C–H–A–A) which would return many a time in various shapes throughout the work to unite it.

[Kumiko Nishi]

The German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) has been profoundly admired and even awed by his successors like Schubert and Schumann, especially because of his dauntless spirit and insatiable pursuit of musical innovations. Beethoven’s nine symphonies, all disparate, show us concisely how he always set off for new horizons at every work to bring unprecedented ideas to fruition.
While Beethoven’s epochal Symphony No. 5 Destiny (1808) became the model among models of an abstract symphony sculpted with highly elaborate motivic development for all the composers to come, his unusual five-movement No. 6 Pastorale (1808) having official programmatic content, blazed a trail for future programmatic symphonies with the genuine Romantic spirit such as Symphonie fantastique (1830) by Berlioz and acres of symphonic (tone) poems. The following No. 7 is, of all Beethoven’s symphonies, arguably the most closely connected with the notion of dance, displaying an unrelenting rhythmic vitality. We can hear why Wagner, another great admirer of Beethoven, extolled this piece with the celebrated expression, “apotheosis of dance.”
Completed in 1812, No. 7 was premiered the next year in Vienna under the composer’s own baton alongside his patriotic orchestral piece Wellington’s Victory (often called the Battle Symphony) in the same program. The first sonata movement of No. 7 is opened with a large Apollonian, peaceful introduction before the light-hearted main section dominated by repeated dotted rhythm starts. The second movement in a steady duple meter is a sort of march, which is in a way, the most fundamental form of dance. Its slower tempo and obsessively repeated note in a dark mood seem to evoke a funeral procession. Incidentally, Schumann’s Etudes in Variation Form on a Theme by Beethoven (1833) would be based on this movement’s main theme. The third movement is a brisk scherzo with two contrasting sections alternating with each other (A–B–A–B–A). The fourth movement, again in sonata form, is a Dionysian wild finale distinctive of a repeated rhythm with an accent on the second beat. The conclusion is probably the most euphoric in the history of symphonies.

[Kumiko Nishi]