No. 2060 Subscription (Program A)

Given the deserved title “Father of Symphony” today, Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) established the First Viennese School which was further developed and led to perfection by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Highly respected already while he was alive, Haydn left us an enormous number of masterful vocal and instrumental works.
For a large part of his artistic life, Haydn served the wealthy Esterházy family. His main workplace was the court of this Hungarian noble family in Eisenstadt, Austria, not far from the Hungarian border. Around the time when they hired Haydn on May 1st, 1761 as their Vice-Kapellmeister (vice-music director), their orchestra was small. It had not more than fifteen members, all of whom, however, were excellently skilled (it gradually extended to around twenty-three at its height). During his earliest years at the court from 1761 until 1766 when he was promoted to Kapellmeister, Haydn was a uniquely prolific composer of concertos and symphonies. They were dotted with unusually virtuosic passages for these musicians to play, as represented by the famous Symphonies No. 6 Morning, No. 7 Noon and No. 8 Evening (1761).
One of these elites was cellist Joseph Franz Weigl (1740–1820) who joined the Esterházy orchestra on June 1st, 1761 on Haydn’s suggestion. It is believed that the Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major was written in around 1762–1765 for Weigl to serve as the soloist. At the premiere, he was possibly the only cellist who also played the orchestral cello part.
The opening movement in sonata form shows a remnant of the Baroque concerto, or more specifically, its ritornello form which vividly contrasts tutti (full orchestra) with solo. The winds (oboes and horns) are absent during the calm middle movement, which is followed by the finale, a brisk sonata-allegro. Throughout the concerto, the cello solo fully maximizes the instrument’s technical and expressive potential playing multiple stops (producing several notes simultaneously), speedily repeating notes, quickly moving from a register to another and lyrically singing.

[Kumiko Nishi]

As with Mozart’s Requiem K. 626, Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)’s Symphony No. 9 was left unfinished in 1896 when he passed away at age 72. According to his maid, he was working on the incomplete final (fourth) movement on the day he breathed his last. Dedication “to the beloved God,” No. 9 has been often linked with this deeply religious composer facing the final phase of his life in this world.
Born near Linz, Bruckner, as a boy, was led to his Catholic beliefs at the church where his father was a music director. The child subsequently became a chorister at St. Florian Monastery where he deepened his faith. He later made a living as a church organist prior to moving to Vienna in 1868 in his mid-forties. The late bloomer had to long put up with the cold treatment of his works, until the successful premiere in Leipzig of the Symphony No. 7 spread his fame far and wide in 1884 when he was sixty. The work’s ensuing Viennese premiere in 1886 won a rave review, before he received the Order of Franz Joseph from the Emperor and an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna.
Bruckner set to work on No. 9 in 1887. The reason why his last nine years were not enough for him to finish it was his intense urge to retouch his earlier works. The composition of No. 9 was interrupted by his absorption in revising works including No. 8, after the rejection of its first version by the conductor Hermann Levi, a champion of Bruckner’s music, had injured the latter’s pride. Meanwhile, Bruckner’s health gradually worsened after 1891, which depleted his time, leaving us the finished three movements and the unfinished finale of No. 9. The symphony has since been programmed without the finale customarily, which is the case in today’s concert using the score edited by Leopold Nowak.
Bruckner’s No. 9 clearly follows Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 (1824) in terms of tonality (D minor) and structure with the Scherzo movement preceding the Adagio (slow) movement. That said, Bruckner’s last tonal cathedral—his symphonies are often called so due to their large scale, massive sound, meditative moments and frequent general (long) pauses evoking a cathedral’s long reverberation—is one of a kind. Headed “solemn, mysteriously,” the opening movement is written as a freely designed three-theme sonata (instead of the traditional two-theme), Bruckner’s favorite form. The Scherzo in D minor, started with a dissonant Tristan chord (after Richard Wagner whom Bruckner worshiped), has an unusually rapid trio (central) section. The awe-inspiring Adagio in E major is concluded tranquilly after quoting Bruckner’s different own music including the finale of No. 5, the beginning of No. 7 and the Adagio of No. 8, as if they were flashbacks.

[Kumiko Nishi]