Review: A potent Fifth of Beethoven

This review originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Roger Kaza

Share on Google+:

Attracting big-name international soloists, as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra does on a regular basis, is a sure sign that an orchestra is playing in the big leagues. So does having first chair players that are good enough to take the solo spot themselves. Friday night (October 27, 2017) we had examples of both.

The concert opened with the Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major by Richard Strauss. Written in 1943, when the composer was in his eighties, it's a warm and nostalgic look back on the cultural traditions that had been seriously poisoned by the Nazi regime under which Strauss labored. The last movement in particular, as Music Director David Robertson pointed out in his pre-concert talk, has a kind of grace that recalls the horn concertos of Mozart.

In the solo spot was SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza, delivering a technically solid performance that was a model of classical restraint. That approach worked especially well in the Rondo finale, which skipped along beautifully. For me, though it was a bit less effective on the first and second movements, where a bit more passion would have been welcome. Mr. Kaza also muted his horn a bit too much, I thought, often causing him to be swamped by the orchestra. He and Mr. Robertson showed real rapport, though, and got impeccable support from his fellow orchestra members. It was, overall, a very satisfying piece of work that drew a standing ovation.

Up next was Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs, composed between 1905 and 1908 when he was studying with Arnold Schoenberg but not fully orchestrated and published until 1928. Like the Strauss concerto, this is also music that largely looks back to the past, although in this case that past includes Strauss himself. There's a yearning and ecstatic romanticism to this music that makes it very approachable even if, as René Spencer Saller points out in her program notes, it rather annoyed Schoenberg.

The soloist was soprano Christine Brewer, who is both a big-name international performer as well as a local favorite, with stage credits that include not only Union Avenue Opera and Opera Theatre of St. Louis but also the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and English National Opera. No surprise, then, that her singing here combined a luminous, powerful sound with a clear grasp of the text.

Soprano Christine Brewer
Photo: Christian Steiner

Those texts come from seven different German poets and vary from Carl Hauptmann's straightforward "Nacht" (Night) with its vivid evocation of a nocturnal landscape to Rilke's "Traumgekrönt" (Crowned in Dreams) with its more elliptical sexual references. Ms. Brewer showed the sensitivity to the varied moods of the songs that I have come to expect of her over the years. From the post-coital blush of "Libesode"(Ode to Love") to the quiet contemplation of "Im Zimmer" (Indoors), it was all there, and delivered with great authority.

The concert concluded with a rousing Beethoven Symphony No. 5, conducted without a score and with real fire. The Fifth has been performed and recorded so many times by so many different orchestras that it can be difficult for a conductor to put his own stamp on the work, but Mr. Robertson nevertheless managed to do just that with a driving, high-energy interpretation that created tangible excitement.

It even had some surprises to offer, including a headlong first movement and a graceful second that ran, with only the briefest pause, straight into the ghostly third. The orchestra played superbly, with fine solo work from everyone, including Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks in the first movement cadenza and flautist Ann Choomack on piccolo in the finale.

In a 2006 program note on the Beethoven Fifth for the Performance Today radio program, Christopher H. Gibbs noted that "it is difficult to divest this best known of symphonies from all the baggage it has accumulated through nearly two centuries and to listen with fresh ears to the shocking power of the work and to the marvels that Beethoven introduced into the world of orchestral music." Mr. Robertson's energetic approach jettisoned quite a bit of that baggage, reminding us of the work's remarkable power and originality.

Next at Powell Hall: SLSO Resident Conductor Gemma New leads the orchestra in John William's score for Jurassic Park, accompanying a showing of the film. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., November 3-5. As with all film events, there will be popcorn, drink specials, and you'll be able to bring food and drink into the hall with you; so be careful to avoid spills.

Symphony Preview: Cafe Vienna

We were in Vienna for a few days earlier this month and drenched ourselves in musical history. We visited the Mozarthaus museum. We saw a concert at the Musikverein and took a tour of the Vienna State Opera. We even stayed at the Hotel Beethoven on Papagenogasse, where the wall of our room was dominated by a picture of Placido Domingo in Fidelio.

And, of course, we had coffee and pastries.

This music scheduled for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this weekend (October 27 - 29, 2017) brought all of that back to mind. Two of the three works on the program were first performed in Vienna and the third, while premiered in Salzburg, was performed there by the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm. So it's essentially "all Vienna all the time" this weekend.

The concerts open with that last work I mentioned. It's the Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major by Richard Strauss. First performed on August 11th, 1943, the concerto's warmly nostalgic sound stands in stark contrast to the state of mind of its composer. His heath was not good, his wife was going blind, and the regime to which he had effectively sold his soul-and which he would later describe as a "twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals"-was collapsing. Small wonder, then, that he took refuge in a kind of musical nostalgia.

Roger Kaza

Its lyricism not withstanding, the concerto is a difficult piece to perform, which may be one of the reasons why this is only the second time the SLSO has presented it. The local premiere was given back in 1987 with the famed Barry Tuckwell as the soloist. This time the solo spot will be taken by SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza. As someone who loves seeing local band members take center stage, I'm very much looking forward to his performance.

Up next will be the Seven Early Songs, composed by Alban Berg between 1905 and 1908 when he was studying with Arnold Schoenberg but not published until 1928. They hark back to the late Romantic sound world of Mahler and Strauss for the most part and are less terse and elliptical than the kind of thing Berg was writing when he published them. That means you can expect something very different from the last Berg song cycle we heard at Powell Hall.

That last song cycle was the Five Orchestral Songs to Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg, performed by local favorite Christine Brewer last May. It's only appropriate, then, that Ms. Brewer is back as the soloist this time around. Ms. Brewer has substantial operatic credentials and Berg's songs are always very theatrical, so it should be a good fit.

Christine Brewer
Photo: Christian Steiner

At the other end of the popularity spectrum is the final work on the program, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. The opening movement, in particular, has been heard and parodied so often that it's easy to forget that the symphony's premiere on December 22, 1808, was not a great success. The Fifth was part of a mammoth five hour program that included the Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral"), the Piano Concerto No. 4, a couple of movements from the Mass in C, a concert aria ("Ah, perfido"), and the Op. 80 Choral Fantasy. Beethoven conducted and played the solo piano part in the concerto and the Fantasy.

There was only one rehearsal before the concert, the musicians weren't up to Beethoven's demands, the auditorium was cold, and by the time the Fifth was played after intermission the audience was exhausted. Things went so badly that at one point the Choral Fantasy had to be stopped completely after a performance error. Not auspicious.

In fact, it wasn't until E.T.A. Hoffmann published an enthusiastic review of the newly published score in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung a year and a half later that everyone began to sit up and take notice of the Fifth. "Radiant beams shoot through this region's deep night," wrote Hoffmann of the music's dramatic effect, "and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy everything within us except the pain of endless longing-a longing in which every pleasure that rose up in jubilant tones sinks and succumbs, and only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with full-voiced harmonies of all the passions, we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits."

More and better-rehearsed performances followed. By the time Hector Berlioz wrote his Critical Study of Beethoven's Nine Symphonies he could state that the Fifth was "without doubt the most famous of the symphonies" and "the first in which Beethoven gave wings to his vast imagination without being guided by or relying on any external source of inspiration." Today the Fifth is famous not just on earth but in outer space as well; a recording of the first movement by the Philadelphia Orchestra was part of the Voyager Golden Record, included on the first two Voyager space probes launched in 1977 and now speeding through deep space.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in music by Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, and Beethoven Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., October 27 - 29. Soprano Christine Brewer will perform Berg's Seven Early Songs and SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza will play Strauss's Horn Concerto No. 2. The concerts will conclude with Beethoven's popular Symphony No. 5. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: Hit and Miss

Share on Google+:

Unless you've sung in a choir or played in a concert band, you probably know Gustav Holst (1874-1934) only as the composer of his popular orchestral suite The Planets, Op. 32, a performance of which concludes the St. Louis Symphony's regular season this weekend, May 6-8, 2016. Singers will probably know Holst's many choral works, and recovering band geeks like yours truly are likely to be familiar with his two suites from 1909 and 1911, or his Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo from 1930. For everybody else, it's The Planets.

Gustav Holst in 1921
Photo: Herbert Lambert

Written between 1914 and 1916, The Planets was an immediate hit and made the previously unknown Holst something of a celebrity. This was not, as it turned out, a welcome development for the rather shy and retiring composer. Indeed, like many composers who became known for a single work, Holst eventually came to actively dislike his Greatest Hit. "Holst never wrote another piece like The Planets again," writes Kenric Taylor at gustavholst.info. "He hated its popularity. When people would ask for his autograph, he gave them a typed sheet of paper that stated that he didn't give out autographs."

If you've never heard The Planets before, you're in for a treat. I remember my delight the first time I heard this wonderfully cinematic seven-movement suite performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan on a 1961 London Records disc. Back then my stereo wasn't much to brag about and the recording itself was a bit murky, but even so, from the first aggressive measures of "Mars, the Bringer of War"--an alarmingly mechanistic march in 5/4 time--I was hooked.

Inspired by the mythological and astrological aspects of the planets, the seven movements turn the heavenly bodies into characters and provide musical portraits of each one. "Mars" is all futile violence and dissonant brass. "Venus, the Bringer of Peace" floats in on a gentle horn solo, wafted along by flutes and strings. "Mercury, the Winged Messenger" zips along its triplets tossed around by the harp, strings, woodwinds, and celesta. And so it goes. Pluto hadn't been discovered yet and earth, of course, doesn't count in astrology, hence the seven movements instead of nine.

Ralph Vaughan Williams
in 1922

Holst actually got two hits out of The Planets, as it happens. The big, noble second theme from "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" proved to be so popular that Holst later used it as a setting for Cecil Spring-Rice's poem "I Vow to Thee My Country." That version of the tune became a kind of second national anthem in England, along the lines of "America the Beautiful" over here.

Opening the concert will be a pair of works that are likely to be much less familiar: Ralph Vaughan Williams's Flos campi (Flower of the Field) from 1925 and Alban Berg's Fünf Orchesterlieder nach Ansichtskarten-Texten von Peter Altenberg (Five Orchestral Songs to Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg), Op. 4 (a.k.a the Altenberg Lieder), from 1912. Both have been performed by the SLSO only once--the former in 1975 under Leonard Slatkin and the latter in 1966 with Eleazar de Carvalho at the podium--and neither one has exactly been on the "Top 40" with orchestras elsewhere.

In the case of the Vaughan Williams, it's partly a matter of the forces involved. In addition to the orchestra, Flos campi is scored for solo viola and mixed chorus--an unusual enough pairing to make programming it problematic. And the piece itself is a bit of an oddity in the composer's output. Cast in six movements and played without pause, it's a series of reflections on texts from one of the most openly sensual bits of the Bible, the Song of Solomon. By turns lyrical, sensuous, pastoral, and even cinematic, it's quirky stuff. Composer Phillip Cooke has called it "one of the silliest, most baffling and (in some parts) most un-Vaughan Williams piece that RVW ever wrote; it is part pastoral elegy, part crazy pagan party." But he then goes on to confess, "I love it."

The score is dedicated to the noted English violist Lionel Tertis and was, in fact, first performed with Tertis as the soloist in 1925 with Sir Henry Wood at the podium. Like Tertis, Vaughan Williams dearly loved the rich, dark sound of the viola and loved writing for it. Discussing the origins of Flos campi, Vaughan Williams's wife Ursula noted that "The viola with its capability of warmth and its glowing quality was the instrument he knew best."

Alban Berg

A different kind of darkness figures prominently in the Berg song cycle, which takes as its text the elliptical and eccentric poems of Peter Altenberg (real name: Richard Engländer). Engländer/Altenberg was an odd duck. "He is reputed to have spent most of his adult waking hours in coffeehouses," writes James Guida in a profile of the poet in The New Yorker, "and the sleeping ones in a hotel that was little more than a brothel. As for writing, his chosen medium was a feuilleton-style prose poem of anywhere from a sentence to a few pages in length, and he did wonders with it." He sent some of those little poems to his friends on postcards, and it's five of those that Berg set to intense and cryptically passionate music.

Like all of Berg's music, the Altenberg Lieder cram a lot of information into a very small amount of time--ten to twelve minutes in most performances. "Each of the songs is symmetrically conceived," writes Alexander Carpenter at allmusic.com, "that is, each begins and ends with similar, if not identical, harmonic or motivic gestures. The songs make considerable use of canon, passacaglia, and variation form." It was all apparently too much for the Viennese audience at the work's 1913 premiere, who booed and hooted like the Paris audiences at the first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring that same year.

Alas, Berg lacked Stravinsky's massive ego and talent for self-promotion, so instead of turning the audience reaction to his advantage, he retreated from composing songs entirely, choosing instead to concentrate on his orchestral works and his celebrated operas Wozzeck and Lulu. He might have achieved even greater things, but when the Nazis came to power he was denounced as a composer of entartete music ("degenerate music") and then had the misfortune to die in 1935 at the age of fifty from an infected insect bite. Such is the impact of dumb luck on human affairs.

The Essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus along with soloists Christine Brewer, soprano, and Kathleen Mattis, viola, on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., May 6-8. The program consists of Vaughan William's Flos Campi, Berg's Altenberg Lieder, and Holst's The Planets. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand.

Electric shocks

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and Children’s Chorus conducted by David Robertson with soloists Susanna Phillips, soprano; Kelley O'Connor, mezzo-soprano; Joseph Kaiser, tenor; Keith Boyer, tenor; Mark Freiman, bass; and Corey McKern, baritone
What: Music of Bruckner, Berg, and Beethoven
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
When: May 9-12, 2013

Share on Google+

For the second week in a row, Maestro David Robertson has taken a well-known piece in the standard repertoire, plugged it into a high-voltage socket, and produced a performance that crackles with electricity.

Susanna Phillips

Last week it was Schubert’s 1822 “Unfinished” symphony. This week it was a work composed around the same time—Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, a.k.a. the “Choral” symphony. Working without a score and conducting a chorus that was singing from memory, Mr. Robertson gave us a 9th that demanded attention from the first notes and didn’t let go until the final rousing chords. Like my personal favorite Beethoven 9th (the one with Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players), this was a performance that generated a tremendous amount of excitement. Yes, there were bits of ragged playing here and there, but only a few and not nearly enough to take away from the truly stunning impact of what Mr. Robertson, chorus director Amy Kaiser, and their forces accomplished here. The little burst of spontaneous applause that followed the first movement Thursday night (graciously acknowledged by Mr. Robertson) was an indication of how caught up the audience was.

Kelley O'Connor

Like many young vocal performers, the soloists for the Beethoven all had solid opera credentials; pure recitalists seem rather rare these days. From my point of view, that’s all to the good. Soprano Susanna Phillips, mezzo Kelley O'Connor, tenor Joseph Kaiser, and baritone Corey McKern all acted the text of the final movement as well as they sang it, and they sang it wonderfully. They were also more easily heard (at least from our seats in the Dress Circle) than vocal soloists sometimes are at Powell due, I expect, to their placement above and behind the orchestra rather than in front of it as is usually the case. My experience has been that the farther front soloists are, the harder they are to hear upstairs.

Joseph Kaiser

Those theatrical skills were put to good use in the first half of the program as well, which consisted of a brief Bruckner motet, Christus Factus Est, followed without pause by the grim and violent final act of Berg’s opera Wozzeck.

Although separated by only a little over thirty years, the Bruckner (from 1884) and Berg (composed between 1917 and 1922) are from radically different worlds. The Latin text for the former is about the exaltation of Christ while the German text for the latter, adapted by the composer from Georg Büchner’s unfinished tragedy from 1836-37, is about the debasement of the hapless titular army private. Bruckner’s glorious a cappella music—sung with tremendous power and beauty by the members of the Symphony Chorus—portrays Christ dying for humanity’s sins. Berg’s unsettling twelve-tone score employs a massive post-Wagnerian orchestra to accompany Wozzeck’s murder of his mistress Marie and his own accidental death (or maybe it’s suicide) while trying to cover up the crime.

Corey McKern

The contrast between these two works could not be greater, but oddly enough they seemed to work as a dramatic whole.

The Wozzeck excerpt, in particular, was remarkably compelling, given that this was a semi-staged concert presentation of a work that is, to say the least, overtly theatrical. The various locations—Marie’s bedroom, a lake, and a rowdy tavern—were suggested with lighting, and the limited action took place on a small platform between the chorus and orchestra. The brief appearances by the Lieutenant (tenor Keith Boyer) and the Doctor (bass Mark Freiman) were pushed down to the aisle between the lip of the stage and the first row of seats, as was the final grim scene in which a group of children (members of the Children’s Chorus) tell Marie’s uncomprehending child that his mother is dead. It was all a bit awkward and should have made suspension of disbelief difficult, but Berg’s brilliantly evocative music made it effortless. It helped that Mr. McKern’s Wozzeck, Ms. Phillips’s Marie, and Ms. O’Connor’s Margret (Marie’s friend, who calls Wozzeck out for the blood on his hands) were so completely credible.

Mr. Robertson’s interpretation was wonderfully knowing and dramatic, and the members of the orchestra played with their usual consummate skill. That’s all the more impressive when you take into account that Berg’s score is not easy to navigate and not often heard locally. I don’t think the opera has ever been staged here, and the Symphony’s last concert performance was over forty years ago.

I’ve always felt a bit ambivalent about Wozzeck—attracted by the music, repelled by the story—but Thursday’s performance has got me thinking that one of our local opera companies might want to take a look at it. It might be a bit risky for Opera Theatre, but it might be right up Union Avenue’s alley.

These concerts concluded the regular season, but post-season action continues next week with The Music of Whitney Houston on Friday, May 17; a free Youth Orchestra Concert on Saturday, May 18; and a Tribute to Richard Hayman on Sunday, May 19. Every audience member at that last one gets a free harmonica to play along with the orchestra and harmonica player Mike Runyan.

Concerts in June include the 1812 Overture and Bolero on June 8 and a League of American Orchestras Conference Concert on June 18 featuring Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 and John Adams’s "Doctor Atomic" Symphony. For ticket information: stlsymphony.org.

Finally, this postscript: this weekend’s concerts marked not only the end of the current season, but also the retirement of two highly respected Symphony musicians: harpist Frances Tietov and bass clarinet James Meyer. Mr. Robertson took a few moments at the beginning of the concert to honor both retirees, who received a warm round of applause from the audience.

Tales of old Vienna

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson with violinist James Ehnes
What: Music of Brahms, Berg, and Beethoven
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
When: March 8 and 9, 2013

Share on Google+

“Beautiful” isn’t a word you often hear applied to the twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School, but I can’t think of a better one to describe the performance of Alban Berg’s 1935 Violin Concerto by soloist James Ehnes and the symphony under David Robertson.

Yes, the need to derive all of the concerto’s thematic material from a single twelve note sequence (first stated by the violin at the very beginning) can lead to a sense of emotional aridity at times, but on the whole it’s a very compelling piece, especially when played this well.

Berg was not, of course, a didactic musical revolutionary along the lines of his mentor, Arnold Schoenberg, so his essays in serialism are often relatively approachable. And in the case of the concerto, he was strongly influenced by a personal tragedy—the death, at age 18, of Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler by her second husband, the famed Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius. It turned what might have been a more abstract piece into a kind of Serialist version of Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration,” complete with a sublime conclusion based on a direct quote of Bach’s setting of the chorale “Es ist genug (It Is Enough).”

But let’s return to the performance. Mr. Ehnes is not a showy artist. Unlike some deservedly famous fiddlers, he dresses conservatively and is not given to flashy gestures. He is, nevertheless, both an impressive technician and a sensitive musician who brought out all the drama and pathos in Berg’s music. He played the difficult Allegro that opens the second movement, for example, with the ease of a true virtuoso but did not lack for tenderness in that transcendent Bachian finale. Both he and Mr. Robertson turned in a performance that would likely have drawn a prolonged standing ovation had the music been (say) Tchaikovsky rather than Berg. At least on Friday morning that didn’t happen, which seems rather unfair. Greatness in the execution of difficult material, it seems to me, ought to get more recognition rather than less.

If Berg wore his heart on his sleeve in his concerto, Beethoven went to the other extreme in his Symphony No. 2, which closed the program. Written in 1802, the year in which the composer’s deafness was becoming apparent and in which he composed the famous “Heiligenstadt Testament”—a letter intended for (but never sent to) his brothers documenting his despair and hinting at suicide—the symphony shows not a trace of the anguish that plagued its creator. “In this Symphony,” wrote Hector Berlioz, “everything is noble, energetic, proud.” It’s as though the composer sought release from his dark mood in unstintingly sunny music.

As is often the case with these concert standards, Mr. Robertson put his own personal stamp on the music without imposing himself on it. Tempi were well chosen, orchestral details were nicely highlighted, and the performance as a whole brought out all of the lyricism, drama, and (especially) good humor in the score. I’m not saying it supplanted my Roger Norrington recording in my affections, but it came awfully close.

The concert opened with an equally well-turned reading of Brahms’s Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn from 1873. The theme, titled "Chorale Saint Antoni", is from wind partita originally attributed to Haydn. It now appears to be of uncertain authorship and some orchestras have taken to referring to it instead as the “Saint Anthony” variations, but no matter what the name, this set of eight variations and passacaglia finale never fails to entertain.

As befits the origins of its theme, the work features some magnificent writing for the orchestral winds and brasses. It was all delivered splendidly by the orchestra winds, which this week included out-of-town guests Ann Choomack on piccolo (from the Richmond Symphony) and Bob Lauver on horn (from the Pittsburgh Symphony. The rapid passages of the fifth and eighth variations were especially impressive.

As Paul Schiavo points out in his concert notes, the symphony has given us a number of programs this season featuring Viennese composers. This was one of the weightier ones—no waltzes this time, unless you count the demented one that pops up at the end of the first movement of the Berg concerto—but no less delightful for all that.

Next on the calendar: The regular season resumes March 23 and 24 with Copland’s Quiet City and Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo, Bernstein’s Serenade (with David Halen on solo violin), and a flute concerto by Christopher Rouse with Mark Sparks as soloist. Mr. Robertson conducts. For ticket information: stlsymphony.org.

TPTBT (The Place to Be Tonight): Saturday, March 9

Share on Google+

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson with violinist James Ehnes
What: Music of Brahms, Berg, and Beethoven
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
When: Tonight at 8
Why: “Beautiful” isn’t a word you often hear applied to the twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School, but I can’t think of a better one to describe the performance of Alban Berg’s 1935 Violin Concerto by soloist James Ehnes and the symphony under David Robertson. Yes, the need to derive all of the concerto’s thematic material from a single twelve note sequence (first stated by the violin at the very beginning) can lead to a sense of emotional aridity at times, but on the whole it’s a very compelling piece, especially when played this well. Add in elegant performances of Brahms's Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn (it probably wasn't really his them, but what the heck) and Beethoven's Symphony No. 2, and you have nicely varied (if weighty) evening of Viennese music. See my review at 88.1 KDHX for details.