Subscription Concerts 2024-2025Program C
No. 2041 Subscription (Program C)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957) enjoyed exceedingly smooth sailing earlier in life as a composer, in contrast to his later years which took an unexpected turn. Born as a child of the renowned music critic Julius Korngold in Brünn (today Brno), Austria-Hungary, he soon moved to Vienna. Gustav Mahler (Julius’s friend) famously praised Korngold’s cantata calling the nine-year-old composer a genius. His fame continued to grow in Europe until the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of World War II caused an unprecedented number of Jewish people to expatriate including Korngold. In the USA, his new base, he wrote scores for many American movies. His style, featuring Wagnerian leitmotif technique and Mahlerian/R. Straussian orchestration pioneered the Hollywood music we hear today.
Written in D major as with Beethoven’s and Tchaikovsky’s, Korngold’s Violin Concerto (1945) dates from this American period and it was premiered after the war in 1947 in the USA. The Viennese premiere of the same year got harsh feedback which greatly disappointed Korngold: he was, for Europeans, an outdated late-Romantic who now served popular entertainment. This Concerto quoting four of Korngold’s movie scores, however, reminds modern-day people’s ears of how skillfully refined and appealing his film music was.
The first movement headed “nobile (nobly)” is in a flexible sonata form. At the start, the violin solo immediately states the broad principal theme based on Korngold’s score for the movie Another Down (1937). The beginning (A–D–A–D–G♯) of this theme will recur to unify the whole concerto. During the central A-major section, the violin solo sings another ear-pleasing melody from his music for the movie Juarez (1939). The slow second movement in G major, Romance, is in ABA form. The gentle main theme given by the violin solo is from the score for the movie Anthony Adverse (1936) which brought Korngold the Academy Award for Best Music. The virtuosic finale in rondo-sonata form in D major also recalls the trailblazer of the Hollywood music: the melodious second theme introduced in B♭ major by the violin solo is from Korngold’s score for the movie The Prince and Pauper (1937).

[Kumiko Nishi]

Born in Kalischt, Bohemia (in the Austrian Empire) in 1860—merely two years earlier than Claude Debussy (1862–1918)—, Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) is considered the last Romantic titan. His style is influenced by Wagner when it comes to rich harmonies, extreme chromaticism and long-stretched melodies. And all of Mahler’s symphonic works are the epitome of late-Romanticism with their highly expressive and reflective nature, great length and colossal formation.
Completed in 1888 in his late twenties while he was the Leipzig Opera’s second conductor in Germany, Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 already shows several signature features that will be present in his later symphonies, the prime examples being the sublime and the profane sitting side by side, evocations of Nature, and pregnant citations of his own songs. Interestingly enough, No. 1 was conceived and first performed (in Budapest in 1889) as a symphonic poem with five movements in two parts. Then Mahler, a tenacious reviser, entitled the 1893 Hamburg version “Titan, a tone-poem in symphony form” after Jean Paul’s four-volume novel Titan (1803) giving programmatic titles to the parts and movements which allude to Jean Paul, E. T. A. Hoffman and Dante. Although Mahler affirmed later these titles were afterthoughts and misleading, they continue to stimulate the imagination of the interpreters and listeners of this titanic work to a greater or lesser extent.
Commonly performed today as the Symphony No. 1 is the 1896 Berlin version. (Mahler would keep making minor revisions to it.) Distinctive differences between this version and the former ones are that it is in four movements (the bipartite concept was dropped and the slow movement “Blumine” was cut out entirely), has no descriptive titles, and calls for a larger orchestra including at least seven horns and two sets of timpani.
The first movement is a sonata with a slow extended introduction which illustrates, according to the Hamburg version, “the awakening of Nature from the long sleep of winter.” The woodwinds introduce a falling fourth-interval motif (soon turning to cuckoo calls) which will recur as a unifying element of the entire symphony. The second movement is a Ländler, a Bavarian and Austrian rural dance. The main theme is a quotation from Mahler’s own song Hans and Grete that he originally wrote as May Dance on the Green for his first love in 1880.
Ironically cheery, the third movement is an early example of Mahler’s obsession with the funeral march. Over timpani, the contrabass solo first sings the nursery round tune Bruder Martin (also known as Bruder Jacob or Frère Jacques) eerily in a minor key. Without a pause, a cymbal crash begins the finale that the Hamburg version called “Dall’inferno (From Hell), the suddenly erupting cry of a heart wounded to its depths.” After the comeback of the symphony’s opening introduction, Mahler lets seven hornists stand to play during the triumphant ending.

[Kumiko Nishi]