CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 8:00 PM

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim, Conductor

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral"

WAGNER Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
SCHOENBERG Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31

Encore:
J. STRAUSS JR. "Unter Donner und Blitz," Op. 324

Program is approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes, including one intermission

Sponsored by KPMG LLP

Program Notes:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, “Pastoral”

About the Composer

Countless stories from many periods of Beethoven’s life attest to the delight the composer took in the world of nature. When in Vienna, he never failed to take his daily walk around the ramparts, and during his summers spent outside of town he would be outdoors most of the day. The notion of treating the natural world in music occurred to him as early as 1803, when he wrote down in one of his sketchbooks a musical fragment in 12/8 time (the same meter used for the “Scene at the brook”) with a note: “Murmur of the brook.” He published the Sixth Symphony in 1808 with titles for each movement. Many romantic composers and critics saw in this program a justification for storytelling as a creative component in symphonic writing.

Much more important for an understanding of Beethoven’s view is the note that Beethoven had printed in the program of the first performance: “Pastoral Symphony, more an expression of feeling than painting.” Clearly this symphony provided yet again what all of his symphonies had offered: subjective moods and impressions captured in harmony, melody, color, and the structured passage of time.


About the Work

Beethoven’s sketchbooks reveal that he was working on his Fifth and Sixth symphonies at the same time. They were finished virtually together and premiered on the same concert. Yet no two symphonies are less likely to be confused, even by the most casual listener, than the Fifth (with its demonic energy, tense harmonies, and powerful dramatic climaxes) and the Sixth (with its smiling and sunny air of relaxation and joy). Beethoven clearly planned for them to represent opposing poles of musical expression, even in those respects in which they are most alike.

The Fifth deals in dissonant chords that color the mood almost throughout. The Sixth is more relaxed, built on the very simplest harmonies—the three chords that students learn in the first few days of harmony class. As with the Fifth, the melodic material of the first movement derives from the very beginning of the work, but in the Sixth, the thematic motives—there are at least four of them—are relaxed, genial, apparently in no hurry to get anywhere. Our course through the first movement is perfectly balanced with slow swings from tonic to dominant and back or lengthy phrases reiterating a single chord, then jumping to another chord for more repetition. The fact that all this sheer repetition does not lead to fatigue or exasperation on the listener’s part is tribute to Beethoven’s varied orchestral colors and textures.

The richly scored second movement opens with two muted cellos providing a background murmur along with second violins and violas, while the first violins and woodwinds embellish the melodic flow with a rich array of turns and trills. No listener familiar with the traditions of Western music can fail to recognize its bucolic leisure, in which the gentle running of water, bird song, soft breezes, and rustling leaves are all implicit. Toward the end of the movement, Beethoven identifies solo passages on the flute, oboe, and clarinet as the songs of nightingale, quail, and cuckoo, singing in classical four-measure phrases.

Only twice in Beethoven’s symphonic output did he link the movements of a symphony so that they would be performed without a break: in these sibling symphonies, the Fifth and Sixth. In the “Pastoral” Symphony, the linking passage has grown to a full movement. The scherzo, a real dance movement in F major, is interrupted just at its last chord by a dramatic Allegro in F minor. The violence of that extended passage gradually dies down and returns to the major mode for the final passage of rustic simplicity, a release from the tension of the storm.



RICHARD WAGNER (1813–1883)

Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde

About the Composer

In 1854, inspired by his love for Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a wealthy merchant, Richard Wagner conceived a work based on one of the great medieval love stories, Tristan and Isolde. He actually began composing the music in October 1857, by which time he was living in a cottage near Zurich, placed at his disposal by the music-loving Wesendonck. He had already completed the first two panels of his great tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen, but he desperately needed a work that could be easily performed in any theater, thus bringing in a steady royalty income. He planned for Tristan and Isolde to be an easily produced potboiler—small cast, simple sets—that would take care of his financial needs while he completed the Ring.


But as he composed, his muse carried him to new extremes of harmonic audacity, and the title roles grew into two of the most strenuous in the entire repertory. This “easy” opera turned out to be almost unperformable. Wagner completed the work in 1859, but it took six years to get an opera house to produce it.


About the Work

The essence of the opera’s musical language is delay: Dissonant harmonies cry out for resolution, but even as the ear hears a longed-for note, another dissonance appears elsewhere. There is scarcely a complete stop anywhere within each of the three long acts, and only at the very end of the opera—when Isolde dies in a transfiguring ecstasy over the body of Tristan—does the stream of endless melody finally come to rest. This musical device of misleading harmonic resolutions perfectly captured the opera’s theme of passionate love that was constantly frustrated, and it equally became the source of an intensified chromaticism in the musical language of Europe. Tristan is in many ways the starting point for the modern music of the following century.

The Prelude begins the process of musico-erotic frustration with one of the most famous phrases in all of music, ending on a harmonically ambiguous chord. Wagner breaks it off and repeats it at a higher step. Phrases are poised as if waiting for something—but time and again, the “something” is delayed almost beyond bearing. For concert purposes, the Prelude is linked to the closing pages of the score, where the questions asked at the beginning of the work are finally answered in a release of tension that has been understood from the beginning as a sexual climax expressed through musical tones.

Wagner called this closing scene a “transfiguration,” but it has come to be known as the Liebestod (“Love Death”). Tristan lies severely wounded. He dies in Isolde’s arms just as she arrives to be reunited with him. Oblivious to everything around her, she begins to sing. Her voice, along with the accompanying orchestra, rises gradually to a transcendently climactic moment, then dies quickly away as she sinks upon his corpse. Even in a purely orchestral performance, the music builds to an ecstasy that eventually reaches an orgasmic release and collapses to the final closing gesture as Isolde falls dead on the body of her lover.



ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951)

Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31

About the Composer

Of all major composers, Schoenberg is surely the one most entitled to be called the prophet without honor in his own land. Even after he had passed the age of 50 and attained an eminence that few composers enjoy in their lifetimes, he was still unable to break into the programs of the Vienna Philharmonic. When he was halfway through composing his Orchestral Variations, he wrote to Wilhelm Furtwängler in Berlin that he was ready to let go of any hope that the work might be performed in his native city.

When Furtwängler performed it in Berlin in 1928, it was clear that the composer’s vision had outstripped his audience’s willingness to follow. The first performance was a marked failure; Schoenberg later wrote to the conductor, expressing his disillusionment that Furtwängler had not programmed it again as a way of expressing his confidence in the piece.


About the Work

Schoenberg uses the B-A-C-H melodic pattern (in German musical notation, B is B-flat and H is B-natural) during the course of his variations as a tribute to the master to whom all German-speaking composers rendered honor. The work begins with an introduction in which the important intervals are gradually presented in wispy orchestral colors that lend an insubstantial air. Later, a fortissimo orchestral statement dies away, leaving the B-A-C-H theme sung sweetly in the first trombone.

The main theme appears as a lovely cantabile melody in the cellos. As they sing, we are scarcely aware that Schoenberg is giving us a statement and manipulation of the 12-tone row: forward, then upside-down and backward, then backward, and finally (when the violins enter) upside-down.

The nine variations that follow are separated by slight pauses. For most of the piece, Schoenberg alternates variations for essentially the full ensemble with one of a much more delicate chamber-music character. He entwines contrapuntal themes essentially throughout, in homage to two of his favorite composers: Bach and Brahms. At Variation 8, he stops the practice of alternating full orchestra with smaller ensemble in order to build toward a conclusion. Variation 9 is slightly slower, but it leads directly into the Finale, which recalls the wispy feel of the introduction, then builds in energy. A sudden adagio presents the last direct statement of the theme, and a brief presto rushes us on to the conclusion.

—Steven Ledbetter © 2010

More Information:

Despite the storm unleashed at its midpoint, Beethoven’s "Pastoral" Symphony creates a warm and relaxed mood, unlike most of his other high-drama symphonies. The Vienna Philharmonic, founded not long after Beethoven’s death, then follows the road of history, to Wagner’s passionate ecstasy and Schoenberg’s blend of total abandon and total control.

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim, Conductor
Daniel Barenboim, Conductor

Daniel Barenboim was born in Buenos Aires in 1942. He received piano lessons from his mother and father, who would remain his only piano teachers. At the age of seven, he gave his first public concert in Buenos Aires. In 1952, he and his parents moved to Israel.

At age 11, Mr. Barenboim took part in conducting classes in Salzburg under Igor Markevitch. In the summer of 1954, he also met Wilhelm Furtwängler, who then wrote, “The 11-year-old Daniel Barenboim is a phenomenon.” In the following two years, Mr. Barenboim studied harmony and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.

At age 10, Mr. Barenboim gave his international debut performance as a solo pianist in Vienna and Rome, followed by concerts in Paris, London, and New York. Since then, he has regularly toured Europe and the United States, as well as South America, Australia, and the Far East. Mr. Barenboim began his recording career as a pianist in 1954, and he has recorded the complete piano concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart.

Mr. Barenboim had his debut as a conductor in London with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1967 and as an opera conductor at the Edinburgh Festival in 1973. In 1981, he conducted for the first time at the Bayreuth Festival, where he would conduct every summer for the next 18 years.

Mr. Barenboim has been music director of the Orchestre de Paris (1975–1989) and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1991–2006); since 1992, he has been Music and Artistic Director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. In 2000, the Staatskapelle Berlin appointed him Principal Conductor for Life. At the opening of the 2007–2008 season, Mr. Barenboim began a close relationship with the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

In 1999, Mr. Barenboim, together with the Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said, set up the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, bringing together young musicians from Israel and Arab countries each summer. The orchestra seeks to enable a dialogue between the various cultures of the Middle East through the experience of making music together.

Mr. Barenboim has published a number of books, including an autobiography, A Life in Music, and Parallels and Paradoxes, which he wrote together with Mr. Said. Recently, he has published Everything Is Connected and, together with Patrice Chéreau, Dialoghi su musica e Teatro: Tristano e Isotta.


Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

There is perhaps no other musical ensemble more consistently and closely associated with the history and tradition of European classical music than the Vienna Philharmonic. In the course of its more than 160-year history, the musicians of this most prominent orchestra of the capital city of music have been an integral part of a musical epoch that—thanks to an abundance of uniquely gifted composers and interpreters—must certainly be regarded as unique.

The orchestra’s close association with this rich musical history is best illustrated by the statements of countless preeminent musical personalities of the past. Richard Wagner described the orchestra as being one of the most outstanding in the world; Anton Bruckner called it “the most superior musical association”; Johannes Brahms counted himself a “friend and admirer”; Gustav Mahler claimed to be joined together through “the bonds of musical art”; and Richard Strauss summarized these sentiments by saying, “All praise of the Vienna Philharmonic reveals itself as understatement.”

The Vienna State Opera Orchestra holds a special relationship with the private association known as the Vienna Philharmonic. In accordance with Philharmonic statutes, only a member of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra can become a member of the Vienna Philharmonic. The engagement in the Vienna State Opera Orchestra provides the musicians a financial stability that would be impossible to attain without relinquishing their autonomy to private or corporate sponsors.

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s mission is to communicate the humanitarian message of music into the daily lives and consciousness of its listeners. In 2005, the orchestra was named Goodwill Ambassador for the World Health Organization; since 2006, the orchestra has also been a supporter of the Phonak initiative Hear the World. As of November 2008, Rolex is the worldwide presenting sponsor of the Vienna Philharmonic. The musicians endeavor to implement the motto with which Ludwig van Beethoven, whose symphonic works served as a catalyst for the creation of the orchestra, prefaced his Missa Solemnis: “From the heart, to the heart.”