| Following the Nordic Sun | ||||||||||
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Helios Overture, Op. 17 The most important Danish composer of the post-Romantic period, Carl Nielsen, influenced the course of Scandinavian music early in the last century. He was a versatile composer, composing in nearly all genres, but is best known outside Denmark for his symphonies and concertos. In Denmark, his choral works and simple songs are also extremely popular. Nielsen came from a poor family, in a proud but poor country trying to recover from the debacle of its war with Prussia in 1864. His father was a house painter and amateur musician. While he always expressed love for music during his childhood, he never amounted to much as a performer, playing signal horn and trombone in an amateur band until he was 14, at which point he took up the violin. He received his first professional instruction only at the age of 19 when he entered the Copenhagen Conservatory, an education that landed him the undistinguished job as a second violinist with the orchestra of the Royal Theatre. He remained in this position until 1914 while continually developing his skills as a composer. Already In the 1890s, his early compositions started to draw attention, and in 1901 he was granted a modest annual governmental stipend. Nielsen’s limited education, however, only spurred him on to learn everything he could about European culture, philosophy and aesthetics and psychology. This informal but intense study was a lifelong pursuit that resulted in a broad humanistic approach to life, which is reflected in his works. Although he was virtually unknown elsewhere in Europe, he gradually achieved recognition in his native Denmark as composer, teacher, conductor – and essayist, Nielsen’s early works, including the first three symphonies, were strongly influenced by Brahms and Dvorák. But his comfortable Weltanschauung (world-view) was shattered by the outbreak of World War I and the ensuing slaughter. It changed his musical language radically, rendering it more austere and somber. Probably his most frequently performed works today are the Aladdin Suite and the Maskarade Overture. In 1903 Nielsen and his wife, a successful sculptor, went on a journey to Greece. On a cruise through the Aegean Islands he was awed by the stunning spectacle of the rising and setting sun, which became the inspiration for the Helios Overture, with its evocative tone painting. He wrote over the score: "Stillness and darkness – the sun rises with a joyous song of praise – traces its golden way – then sinks silently back into the sea." In keeping with the image of the sun’s journey from dawn to dusk, the Overture is constructed as a grand arch. After a murmuring of undulating basses and cellos, a horn theme signals the sunrise, with a gradual crescendo bolstered by additional instruments.  There follows a second melody that the composer nurtures until a trumpet fanfare signals the Allegro section and presumably high noon. A second calmer theme suggests the winding down of the day into afternoon. Finally a jaunty little fugue paves the way into a return, backwards, of the theme of the second example and finally to the horn call, now getting softer and soft until the low strings of darkness. | ||||||||||
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Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 When Sweden relinquished Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, it became an autonomous duchy with significant control over its own affairs. Beginning in 1870, however, the Tsar gradually whittled away at the Finns’ privileges and autonomy. While Swedish had continued to be the language of the educated and of the middle class, Russian repression aroused strong nationalist feelings and initiated a revival of the Finnish language. Jean Sibelius was born into this nationalistic environment and in 1876 enrolled in the first grammar school to teach in the Finnish language. Sibelius was by no means a child prodigy. He began playing piano at nine, starting to compose at age 10. After abandoning the piano, he took up the violin at 14 with the ambition of becoming a concert violinist. For the rest of his life he regretted not following this dream. His first success as a composer came in 1892 with Kullervo, Op. 7, a nationalistic symphonic poem/cantata that premiered to great acclaim but was never again performed in Sibelius’s lifetime for lack of sufficient forces. For the next six years he composed numerous nationalistic pageants, symphonic poems and vocal works, mostly based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In 1897, in order to enable him to compose undisturbed, the Finnish government gave him a pension for life. For 29 years he composed the symphonies and other orchestral works that made him world-famous. But in 1926, at the age of 61, he essentially quit composing, for reasons he never disclosed, remaining silent until his death 31 years later. All his life Sibelius suffered from bouts of alcoholism. Early on, the condition caused a tremor in his right hand that prevented him from fulfilling his primary ambition of becoming a concert violinist. At numerous times in his life he went on the wagon, only to backslide repeatedly. It was during one of his dry periods late in 1914 that he started composing his Symphony No. 5, premiering it in 1915 in celebration of his 50th birthday. The version generally performed today, however, is the product of four additional years of revisions. The Symphony is strongly influenced by the sounds of the forests and lakes surrounding Sibelius' home in Ainola, north of Helsinki. An early inspiration for the finale came on April 21, 1915, when he saw sixteen swans in flight over his house: “One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, that beauty!…Their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo. The swan-call closer to the trumpet, although there is something of a sarrusophone sound. A low refrain reminiscent of a small child crying. Nature mysticism and life's Angst! The Fifth Symphony's finale-theme: Legato in the trumpets!!” The final version of the Symphony presents a musical puzzle: is it in three movements or four? The first movement is in two sections, each of which presents the same thematic material, but in two entirely different moods. The first section opens with a brooding fanfare introduced by the horns and taken up by the woodwinds that makes up the bulk of the thematic material for this melancholy, sometimes even threatening, part. The second section, marked Allegro moderato, takes the same material but in a whirling triple meter, in a more optimistic mood. The second movement, Andante mosso, quasi allegretto is a set of freely structured variations on a short thirteen-note motive, although without the formal repeat structure of the classic variation form. A hushed chromatic whirring theme in the strings introduces the Finale. The movement shares this excited motive, often in counterpoint, with a somber chordal phrase in the horns that recurs throughout as an ostinato – perhaps a memory of the sound of the flying swans. The Symphony concludes with a cadence consisting of six staccato chords played by the entire orchestra. | ||||||||||
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Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 16 The most successful and best known of nineteenth-century Scandinavian composers, Edvard Grieg, was one of the great exponents of Romantic nationalism. He saw it as his role in life to bring Scandinavian musical and literary culture to the attention of the rest of Europe. As composer, pianist and conductor he became a sought-after fixture in Europe’s music centers. His wife Nina was an accomplished singer, and the two traveled extensively together, popularizing his songs and piano works. In the process, he also helped introduce to the rest of Europe the writings of Scandinavian poets and dramatists, particularly Henrik Ibsen, for whose play Peer Gynt he composed incidental music. As a student Grieg had been a failure. He quit school at 15 never to return. Under the sponsorship of Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, he was granted a scholarship to the Conservatory in Leipzig but hated his teachers and never forgave them their conservatism and pedantry. Understandably, he was not happy with the constraints of the classical sonata form; of all his surviving output, only eight works fall into this category: a youthful symphony, the famous piano concerto, a string quartet, a piano sonata, three violin sonatas and a cello sonata. In all his other compositions he insisted on the freedom of form so dear to the Romantic tradition. All his life, Grieg felt most comfortable with and excelled in smaller musical forms: songs, miniature piano pieces, orchestral dances and re-workings of folk melodies. His aptitude for orchestration was indifferent at best. It is, therefore, surprising that his piano concerto, his only completed large-scale orchestral work outside of the student symphony, would end up as one of the most popular Romantic concertos. Composed in 1868 and revised extensively five times, the last revision coming shortly before the composer's death, the Concerto was modeled after the Piano Concerto of Robert Schumann, with considerable Lisztian influence. Franz Liszt was Grieg’s idol, and he consulted with the older composer on phrasing and piano technique, particularly in the large cadenza. While the Concerto's themes are not ethnic Norwegian – it was written before Grieg became interested in Norway’s folk music – it still has a "Northern" mood and does incorporate Norwegian dance rhythms. Early in its career the Concerto was not well received since its apparent introverted style was foreign to a public used to the fire and bravura of concerti à la Liszt. Ironically, it was the enthusiastic endorsement by Liszt himself that turned the tide and converted both audiences and pianists to the work. Later in his life – his hero worship notwithstanding – Grieg had second thoughts about some of Liszt’s suggestions, and in the last revised version removed some of the latter’s more bombastic additions. This final version is the one commonly heard today. Emulating his models, Grieg opens the Concerto with a strong piano declamation, spanning almost the entire range of the keyboard and followed by a wave of arpeggios before the first theme appears in the orchestra. Only then is the theme taken up by the piano and elaborated. During the transition into the second theme, Grieg reveals his debt to his mentor, Liszt, with passages of unusual dissonance and ambiguous tonality that resolve into lyric expansiveness . The cellos introduce a lyrical second theme although in the earlier versions Grieg had scored it for the trumpets (probably on Liszt’s advice). The written-out cadenza is expansive and, of course, technically challenging. The second movement Adagio is a tender song-like theme on muted strings. When the piano finally enters, it gently embellishes the theme. It is in the last movement that Grieg’s folk impulses break out in a Norwegian dance, the halling. But a gentle middle section introduced by the flute with string accompaniment serves as a contrast to the ebullient dance. After a brief cadenza, the soloist launches into a coda recasting the dance theme into the rapid triple time of the popular Norwegian springdans. The Concerto ends with the gentle flute theme now thundered out by orchestra and soloist. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2014 | ||||||||||
