Subscription Concerts 2024-2025Program C
No. 2038 Subscription (Program C)

Born in Vienna, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) led a short but astonishingly prolific life leaving us as many as around 600 Lieder (German songs). However, it is not well known that the composer of the breathtakingly dramatic song Der Erlkönig (The Erlking) also applied himself to writing theatrical music (opera, Singspiel and incidental music). Worth specific mention is that Schubert as a boy studied composition under the Italian opera master Antonio Salieri (1750–1825) who was the Viennese Court’s music director.
1819–1820 was a period Schubert was especially enthusiastic about composing for stage, one of the fruits being the incidental music for the three-act play Die Zauberharfe (The Magic Harp). He wrote the music in the summer of 1820 at the request of the Theater an der Wien where this “Zauberspiel mit Musik (magic play with music)” was staged eight times the same year. The overture to the first act is well-accepted today as the one for Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (Princess of Cyprus), because it was reused as so at the publication of Schubert’s incidental music for this play.
The overture has a slow, solemn introduction in C minor. The main Allegro section in C major is a sonata with the cheerful first theme (introduced by violins) and the calmer songful second theme (given by woodwinds). Interestingly, the music is reminiscent of Schubert’s Overture in the Italian Style No. 1 in D major (1817), a work reflecting his craze for another Italian opera master Gioacchino Rossini (1792–1868).

[Kumiko Nishi]

The Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi (1877–1960), four years older than his compatriot Béla Bartók (1881–1945), was trained at the Budapest Academy founded by Franz Liszt. Dohnányi’s “opus 1,” the Piano Quintet in C minor written in his late teens (1895), received acclaim from Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) who set the stage for its premiere in Vienna. In contrast to Bartók whose compositions were often rooted in folk music, Dohnányi’s style follows in the wake of the 19th-century German Romanticism under the strong influence of Robert Schumann and, above all, Brahms.
Dohnányi also left his mark on history as one of the greatest virtuoso pianists ever. His 1898 successful appearance in London as the soloist of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 set off the former’s long-term stardom as a concert pianist in Europe and USA. His most notable achievements are the performances of all Beethoven’s piano works (1920) and all Mozart’s twenty-seven piano concertos (1941).
Dohnányi wrote the Variations on a Nursery Tune in his late thirties in 1914 during the period when he, an excellent educator as well, taught at the Berlin Hochschule at the invitation of the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim (a close friend of Brahms). Dohnányi himself served as the soloist of the Variations at the 1914 premiere in Berlin, fully showcasing his high musicality both as a composer and pianist.
What Dohnányi inscribed on the manuscript—“For the enjoyment of friends of humor, to the annoyance of others”—is very suggestive. The orchestral introduction is amazingly majestic, prior to the startlingly simple announcement of the theme (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star / Ah vous dirai-je, Maman) by the piano. Then the eleven variations and the finale come. On occasions, Dohnányi’s witty pen vaguely evokes styles of certain famed composers, such as Richard Strauss (Introduction), Liszt (Variation 1), Brahms (Variation 3, Variation 10 – a passacaglia), Johann Strauss (Variation 7 – a waltz), Tchaikovsky (Variation 8 – a march) and Debussy (Variation 11 – a chorale). Opened by some Beethovenian introductory gestures, the vivacious Finale is a fugue over which the pianist unfolds a restless virtuosic passagework. The return of the theme in its original form, again startlingly simple, leads to the sparkling conclusion full of humor.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Born in Munich, Richard Strauss (1864–1949) was a long-lived and prolific composer. The eminent orchestrator fully explored possibilities of musical narrativity in the genre of symphonic poem during the early stage of his career. Then the focus of his composition shifted to the opera leaving us fifteen works in total. The artistic partnership between him and the Austrian dramatist-poet-librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) became history in particular from their first collaboration Elektra (1908). It was followed by their six masterworks including after-mentioned Der Rosenkavalier (1910) and Die Frau ohne Schatten (1917).
For the plot of Die Frau ohne Schatten, a quest for humanity and love, Strauss and Hofmannsthal were inspired by Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In 1919, Strauss was appointed co-director of the Vienna State Opera where Die Frau ohne Schatten was world-premiered the same year. (Incidentally, the 1984 Japanese premiere of the opera was under the baton of Christoph von Dohnányi, a grandson of above-mentioned Ernst von Dohnányi.)
The story of the opera is about the Emperor and the “shadowless” Empress, daughter of Keikobad (King of the Spirit Realm). Here the shadow is synonymous with the ability to give birth. Keikobad puts a curse on the newlywed couple so the Emperor would be stone unless the Empress gets a shadow within a year. The subplot features a mortal couple going through a marital crisis: the Dyer and his Wife. Although endowed with a shadow, the Wife swears not to have any child. The Empress, in disguise, goes down to the human world and asks the Dyer’s Wife to sell her the shadow, but ends up abandoning the plan for the sake of the Dyer couple. The Empress’s self-renunciation brings about miracles: she obtains a shadow, the Dyer couple restores a lost love and the two couples are happily reunited.
The Symphonic Fantasy for orchestra was prepared by the composer himself in his closing years in 1946. It was partly to compensate for the infrequency of the opera being staged due to its large scale, highly demanding vocal parts, gigantic orchestra and intricate, symbolic plot. A sort of symphonic poem based on the opera, the Fantasy begins with one of the important leitmotifs (recurrent melodic or/and harmonic elements representing certain characters, situations, feelings or so): the grave, descending three-note motif representing Keikobad. Interestingly enough, the rest of the Fantasy is mainly built of leitmotifs linked to the Dyer and his Wife presumably modeled on Strauss’s own wife Pauline. Furtheremore, the Fantasy reaches its climax with the Dyer couple’s lyrical love duet Mir anvertraut (Entrusted to me) from the final act of the opera.

[Kumiko Nishi]

The opera Der Rosenkavalier was a turning point in Richard Strauss (1864–1949)’ stylistic transition. As opposed to the grisly, almost atonal predecessor Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier was viewed as a Mozartian comedy by the composer and his librettist Hofmannsthal. This, so to say, “Marriage of Figaro wearing late-Romantic clothes” incited contemporary critics to accuse Strauss of stylistically regressing, while its 1911 premiere was an unexampled success among the audience.
The opera is set in 18th-century Vienna. The title refers to an imaginary noble custom for a suitor to send a messenger with a silver rose to the bride-to-be. The center of the bittersweet story is Marschallin, a marshal’s wife, having an affair with the teenage Count Octavian. He, by recommendation of his mistress, becomes a Rose Cavalier for Baron Ochs and presents the rose to beautiful young Sophie. Octavian and Sophie fall in love with each other at first sight. Marschallin, heartbroken, has the grace to accept reality.
The orchestral suite performed today is the one prepared anonymously in the mid-1940s and authorized by Strauss. Without any break, it appears to be a symphonic poem freely treating some highlights and waltzes from the original. The suite starts with a famous lovemaking part from the opera with the youthful ascending theme of Octavian (horns) and the refined descending theme of Marschallin (strings) entangled. Later we hear the recurring glittering motif of the silver rose played mainly by flutes, harps and celesta.

[Kumiko Nishi]