St. Louis Symphony Preview: Storm Clouds Rising

Brahms in 1853
en.wikipedia.org

Sturm und drang (usually translated as "storm and stress") was an early Romantic (late 18th century) movement in German literature and music that emphasized drama and conflict. Both Haydn and Mozart wrote symphonies that were seen as embodying the movement's approach. The music that opens the St. Louis Symphony's 135th season this weekend was all written well after the sturm und drang movement had passed, but it's chock full of high drama nevertheless.

To be fair, sturm und drang hadn't passed so much as simply evolved into the pervading sensibility of the Romantic era by the time the young (age 21) Johannes Brahms started work on his "Piano Concerto No. 1" in 1854. The concerto comes from a stormy time in Brahms's life. After attempting suicide by flinging himself into the Rhine, Robert Schumann, Brahms's mentor and friend, committed himself to an asylum. "As soon as he heard about Robert's suicide attempt," writes René Spencer Saller in her program notes, "Brahms rushed to the family's aid, living among them as man of the house. He and Clara became more than friends, if not quite lovers." With seven children and a household to manage, Clara no doubt appreciated the help.

Schumann would die in the asylum two difficult years later, and it's hard not to think of the great stress and tragedy of those events when you hear the powerfully dramatic opening of the concerto, with its portentous drum rolls, declamatory first theme, and melancholy second. "The Piano Concerto No. 1," wrote Larry Rothe in his program notes for a San Francisco Symphony performance, "was born in psycho-turmoil." The piano doesn't even enter until around four minutes in, and when it does it acts more as an equal partner with the orchestra than a flashy solo player. Given the length and scope of the piece (it runs around 45 minutes; longer in some classic recordings), it sometimes feels as much like a symphony with piano obbligato as a concerto; in fact, a symphony was what Brahms had originally intended it to be.

This wasn't what audiences at the time expected from a concerto, and although the initial performance (in Hanover on January 22, 1859, with Brahms at the keyboard) was well received, subsequent performances weren't. In Leipzig they hissed both the music and Brahms's efforts as soloist. A March 1859 performance with the Hamburg Philharmonic went well, but a return engagement of the revised and final version of the concerto did not. After five performances and only one favorable reception, Brahms set the work aside, and it would not come into its own for many years.

At the concert grand for this weekend's performances will be Yefim Bronfman, who made such a strong impression with the Brahms 2nd in November of 2012. I'm looking forward to hearing what he and Mr. Robertson will do with the equally challenging First.

Carl Nielsen in 1910
en.wikipedia.org

If the tragedy underlying the Brahms concerto was purely personal, the one behind the other big work on the program—Carl Nielsen's "Symphony No. 4" (subtitled "The Inextinguishable")—was far more universal. Written between 1914 and 1916, the fourth and the subsequent fifth symphony (from 1920) both bear the scars of The War to End All Wars. "Although Denmark was not drawn into the First World War," writes British musicologist and broadcaster Robert Layton in his notes for the 1988 Paavo Berglund/Royal Danish Orchestra recording, "the unremitting slaughter and senseless destruction haunted Nielsen's imagination. It was quite evident that the war presented the great divide in the affairs of mankind and that life could never be the same again. Nielsen's music assumed a new mantle; its harmonies are less rich, its textures denser and darker, and with the greater complexity of dissonance."

Nielsen's personal life was in disorder as well at the time—his infidelity was causing his marriage to unravel—but there's little doubt that (as Ms. Saller points out in her program notes), even as a citizen of neutral Denmark, he viewed the cataclysm engulfing most of Europe with horror. "It's as if the world is disintegrating," he wrote in an often-quoted letter to a friend. "National feeling, that until now was distinguished as something lofty and beautiful, has become a spiritual syphilis." Sadly, little seems to have changed in the intervening century.

Like the Brahms concerto, Nielsen's symphony jumps out at you from the first notes with a leaping, aggressive theme that quickly dissolves into sad descending figures in the flutes and the first statement of a theme that will eventually morph into a triumphant declaration by the end of the final movement. There's a headlong rush in the music of this symphony that reminds us of the fact that Nielsen, like G. B. Shaw, believed in a kind of pantheistic "life force" that pervaded all of nature. It's that force that Nielsen saw as "inextinguishable," even in the face of war and death. As he wrote in his program notes for the piece, "music is life, and like it inextinguishable."

That force is demonstrated most dramatically in the famous "tympani battle" in final movement, in which tympani players placed on opposite sides of the orchestra fire volleys of sound at each other. "It's as if we are answering each other," says timpanist Shannon Wood in the symphony program notes. "One timpani goes at it, then the other timpani goes at it. You can think of it like guitar duels in rock concerts. Maybe I'll toss my stick out to the audience at the end. Or I'll kick the drums Keith Moon style.”

Vaughan Williams in the army, 1915
rvwsociety.com

In between these two symphonic titans comes a little gem that also dates from the World War I era: Ralph Vaughan Williams's short (13 minutes) romance for violin and orchestra, "The Lark Ascending." Begun in 1914 while the composer was strolling along the seaside cliffs in Kent, it was not completed until the composer returned from his service in the war disillusioned and with what would prove to be progressive hearing loss. By the time "The Lark Ascending" had its first performance in 1921, it had turned into a wistfully nostalgic look back at a bucolic way of life shattered forever by the winds of war.

The piece takes its title from an 1881 poem of the same name by George Meredith that describes the characteristic way skylarks spiral up into the sky while singing. Meredith heard a kind of pantheist divinity in the lark's song that seems to have resonated with the composer, even though he was a devout Christian. Many have since heard a metaphor for the soul's climb to heaven in the way the work's lovely melody floats and, in the end, slowly fades into silence as it makes its final ascent. Indeed, when New York public radio station WNYC polled its listeners on the best classical piece to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, "The Lark Ascending" came in second, right after Barber's "Adagio for Strings."

The full poem is 122 lines long, but here are the lines Vaughan Williams chose to accompany the score:
He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
‘Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

The part of the lark this weekend will be played by Assistant Concertmaster Erin Schreiber. This makes me happy. I'm always glad to see local artists get the spotlight.

The concerts will open with an arrangement of "The Star Spangled Banner" by long-time New York Symphony Orchestra conductor Walter Damrosch (he led the world premieres of Gershwin's "Concerto in F" and "An American in Paris"). With lyrics about "the rocket's red glare" and "bombs bursting in air" it is, I guess, an appropriate way to open a program in which strife is such a major subtextual element.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Yefim Bronfman in Brahms's "Piano Concerto No. 1," violin soloist Erin Schreiber in Vaughan Williams's "The Lark Ascending," and Nielsen's "Symphony No. 4" Friday and Saturday, September 12 and 13, at 8 p.m. The concerts, which open the orchestra's 135th season, take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.