CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
San Francisco Symphony

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 8:00 PM

Pre-concert talk starts at 7:00 PM in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage with James Hepokoski, Professor of Music, Yale University.

San Francisco Symphony
Michael Tilson Thomas, Music Director and Conductor
Deborah Voigt, Soprano

SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7
R. STRAUSS Four Last Songs
BARBER Andromache's Farewell, Op. 39
SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 9

Encore:
TCHAIKOVSKY "Miniature March" from Suite No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 43

Sponsored by Bank of America, Carnegie Hall’s Proud Season Sponsor

Program Notes:

Wed, Mar 12, 2008

JEAN SIBELIUS Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 105
Born December 8, 1865, in Tavastehus (Hämeenlinna), Finland; died September 20, 1957, in Järvenpää, Finland.

Composed in 1924, Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony was first performed on March 24 of that year at the Stockholm Konsertföreningen under the composer’s direction; it received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on January 8, 1927, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.

Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings.

The Seventh Symphony begins with a soft triple rap on a drum. It is a summons to which the strings respond with a scale rising from the depths of the orchestra, arriving on a chord strange in sonority and harmonic implication. All this seems not the beginning of a discourse but like the resumption of one in progress. In a sense it is. Sibelius is an artist whose major statements are in conversation with one another: confirming, contradicting, always continuing.

The Seventh is a single movement, about 20 minutes long. Within that span, tempo and character change often. The sequence reads this way (the emphasis is mine): ADAGIO—VIVACISSIMO-—ADAGIO—Allegro molto moderato—ALLEGRO MODERATO—Vivace—Presto—ADAGIO—Largamente molto—Affettuoso—Tempo I.

These changes are not of equal weight, and we do not hear all of them as structural or expressive markers. The purpose of my emphases is to indicate the real “movements.” We can say Sibelius gives us an Adagio, which is the Symphony’s single biggest section; a scherzo-like Vivacissimo; a sonata-like Allegro moderato, reached by way of a brief reappearance of the Adagio; and a spacious and weighty coda, which actually begins with a brief Presto, but most of which consists of a final return to the Adagio.

What makes this arresting is how Sibelius has made these three movements plus coda into a single piece. Robert Layton has written: “The Seventh consummates the 19th-century search for symphonic unity.” In the Seventh Symphony changing tempos are not merely a condition of Sibelius’s task; his control of speed is the key to his awesome mastery of transition.

After the work’s mysterious opening we hear fragments of scales, in contrary motion, at different speeds, and in various rhythmic articulations. Then Sibelius lays down an extraordinary passage of rich polyphony for all the strings, divided into nine sections. This crescendo is a journey into daylight, toward C major. Through the polyphonic thicket, a solemn proclamation of a single trombone asserts itself with effortless splendor. This statement is the culmination of a process of concentration. Now the music begins to diffuse and seeks escape from the magnetic field of C major. The pace quickens until we find ourselves in the midst of a wild dance with rapidly alternating tattoos of woodwinds and strings. This is the Vivacissimo section. After a while we realize that the exceedingly fast notes have been subordinated to an enormously broader tempo. In other words, the fast notes are still there, but they are now the swirling accompaniment to the slow beats of the second Adagio. This new appearance of the trombone’s command, more insistent than before and embedded in the sounds of heavy brass, marks one of the major articulation points in the Seventh Symphony.

Again the pace quickens, leading to the energetic “third movement,” the Allegro moderato. In a typically Sibelian paradox, the moment of attaining the highest speed also marks the beginning of another great slowing. Here, at the third Adagio, we hear the third great summons of the trombone. This time it leads to a climax more anguished than any we have yet experienced in this symphony. Woodwinds and brass abandon the strings. Then comes collapse, descending harmonies, a fierce gripping of C major, a violently dissonant crescendo cut off with terrifying finality.

After 1926, Sibelius, who lived until 1957, wrote no major composition that survives. Perhaps he felt that, while he had left room for that darkly elusive postscript, the great tone poem Tapiola, he could not add another symphony. He was a master of final cadences, and in that crunch of instruments converging on a chord of C major in his Seventh Symphony he had said, beyond recall, The End.


RICHARD STRAUSS Four Last Songs
Born June 11, 1864, in Munich; died September 8, 1949, in Garmisch.

Composed in 1948, Strauss’s Four Last Songs were first performed on May 22, 1950, in London, with Kirsten Flagstad, soprano, and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler; the songs received their Carnegie Hall premiere on November 11, 1951, with soprano Eileen Farrell and the Cincinnati Orchestra conducted by Thor Johnson.

Scoring: “Frühling,” 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, harp, and strings; “September,” 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, harp, and strings; “Beim Schlafengehen,” 2 flutes, 2 piccolos, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, celesta, and strings (including a prominent passage for solo violin); “Im Abendrot,” 2 flutes (both doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, and strings.

Richard Strauss had an incentive to compose songs. His wife, Pauline de Ahna, was a soprano, and he accommodated her with a burgeoning repertory. They remained married for 55 years, and she survived her husband by only eight months. Nine days after her death, the world first heard Strauss’s final testament to his favorite soprano, the Four Last Songs.

These twilight works are the remarkable product of Strauss’s final years. “Im Abendrot” was the first of the set to be composed, with Strauss completing much of the work on it in 1946. The text is by the 19th-century lyric poet Joseph von Eichendorff, an enduringly popular source for composers since the time of Schumann. The other three songs are settings of poems by Hermann Hesse, enjoying a new-found popularity after receiving the 1946 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Four Last Songs exude a serenity earned through the completion of one’s task. In each of the songs the large late-Romantic orchestra plays an integral role in Strauss’s highly personalized interpretations of the poems. In “Beim Schlafengehen,” for example, the soloist intones a stanza about giving up all physical senses to the escape of slumber—and then seemingly does just that. But the singer’s sleep is given over to a dream, a violin solo derived from the final trio of Strauss’s opera Der Rosenkavalier. How fitting that this should be Strauss’s personal dream—and that it should cease as the singer re-awakens.

Similar details enrich the set throughout, with one of the most poignant occurring in “Im Abendrot.” The song is about two people who, having gone through their lives together “hand in hand,” are poised at the brink of eternity. Two larks take wing—a pair of flutes trilling softly. Struck by the vast stillness before them, the couple pauses for a final question: “Can this perhaps be death?” The answer comes as French horn, English horn, and violas play the “transfiguration motif” from Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, written 60 years earlier. Death is achieved, and, with it, a transfiguration of the spirit. But the song doesn’t end until the larks—now more distant piccolos—fly past again. The world continues. All is well.

It is difficult to think of the Four Last Songs as 20th-century works. Yet despite their reactionary style, they push the limits of musical beauty to almost unbearable poignancy. One recalls the words of George Bernard Shaw: “In art the highest success is to be the last of your race, not the first. Anybody, almost, can make a beginning: the difficulty is to make an end—to do what cannot be bettered.
— James M. Keller


SAMUEL BARBER Andromache’s Farewell, Op. 39
Born March 9, 1910, in West Chester, Pennsylvania; died January 23, 1981, in New York City.

Composed in 1963, Andromache’s Farewell was first performed on April 4, 1963, with Martina Arroyo, soprano, and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Thomas Schippers; the work received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 12, 1967, with Arroyo and the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Joseph Eger.

Scoring: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, tam-tam, bass drum, snare drum, tenor drum, xylophone, celesta, antique cymbal, tambourine, anvil, whip, wood block, harp, and strings.

Samuel Barber dropped a career as a singer to concentrate on composition, but he never lost his love of the voice, as testified by his many songs and by vocal works such as Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and his operas Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra. The concert piece Andromache’s Farewell was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in celebration of its opening season at Lincoln Center.

The composer set the scene for Andromache’s Farewell in a note included in the score. “Scene: an open space before Troy, which has just been captured by the Greeks. All Trojan men have been killed or have fled and the women and children are held captives. Each Trojan woman has been allotted to a Greek warrior and the ships are now ready to take them into exile. Andromache, widow of Hector, Prince of Troy, has been given as a slave-wife to the son of Achilles. She has just been told that she cannot take her little son with her in the ship. For it has been decreed by the Greeks that a hero’s son must not be allowed to live and that he is to be hurled over the battlements of Troy. She bids him farewell. In the background the city is slowly burning. It is just before dawn.”

Barber captures Andromache’s excruciating emotions—sorrow, despair, anger. Though Andromache’s Farewell is a self-contained piece and not part of a larger work, listeners cannot help but be reminded of the great scenes for soprano and orchestra by composers such as Wagner and Richard Strauss. Andromache’s Farewell is operatic in the best3 sense of the word, with the voice conveying emotion through the combination of words and music into riveting drama.
—Paul Thomason


DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70
Born September 25, 1906, in St. Petersburg; died August 9, 1975, in Moscow.

Composed in 1945, Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony was first performed on November 3 of that year, with the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky; it received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 7, 1946, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Artur Rodzinski.

Scoring: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, bass tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, and strings.

Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony was supposed to celebrate triumph in war and glorify Stalin—it was to be a real “Ninth Symphony” with chorus, soloists, and huge orchestra. The composer actually began such a piece, but by August 1945, when he wrote the Ninth Symphony we now have, he had changed his plans. The work introduced that November was a symphonic comedy. The Soviet pooh-bahs were enraged.

The Ninth, the shortest of Shostakovich’s symphonies, resembles Prokofiev’s brilliant “Classical” Symphony with its crisp articulation, transparent scoring, and near absence of dissonance. The first movement is wide awake and on its toes. A crisply staccato arpeggio sets the symmetrical first phrase in motion. The next theme is a delightfully twitchy affair for piccolo. Shostakovich asks for the exposition to be repeated—all this is more textbook orthodox than most first movements by Haydn and Mozart. The briskly energetic development concentrates on the opening music. In the recapitulation, the concertmaster takes over from the piccolo.

A long melody for solo clarinet with the barest hint of accompaniment by pizzicato cellos and basses begins the second movement. The melody is inspired, describing a beautifully shaped arch. Shostakovich then gives us a lovely passage of chamber music for winds. The strings reappear with an even more melancholic waltz.

The third movement is the symphony’s shortest. This is comedy with teeth. The music is suddenly interrupted by a stern proclamation issued by trombones and tuba. With our attention newly focused, Shostakovich gives the bassoon a soliloquy. The brass repeat their challenge, and the bassoon responds with something even more intensely expressive. The last note, held for a long time, becomes the springboard from which the music leaps into the playful finale.

The change from deep pathos to fun and games is shocking. Shostakovich’s finale is the occasion for the joyous unpacking of many of his comic tricks. With the skill of a composer accustomed to commanding far greater spaces, he increases tempo and energy until he arrives at a close both boisterous and neatly punctual.
—Michael Steinberg

All program notes copyright © 2008 by the San Francisco Symphony, except for the note on Strauss’s Four Last Songs, copyright © New York Philharmonic, in whose program book it first appeared in different form.