CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

through the minor tonic chord, is announced immediately by the violins to launch the work. Rather than presenting a contrasting melody, however, the exposition maintains for its entire length the dark mood of the opening. Following an elaboration of the main theme in the development section, the second theme, a bright melody in D major, is used as a transition to the recapitulation, which returns the main theme and the restless emotion of the exposition.

The rapt second movement is an exercise in musical asceticism. The sparest wisps of melody and counterpoint are used to create an almost nocturnal mood, heightened by the ethereal tone quality of muted violins, an instrumental color Haydn valued so highly at the time that he used it in the slow movements of all of the fourteen symphonies he composed between 1771 and 1774.

The jaunty Menuetto is in F-sharp major. So unusual was this key in late-18th-century music that the Esterháza blacksmith had to build new crooks for the valveless horns especially for this work so that the players could tune their instruments to match the rest of the orchestra. The horn melody of the trio is based on the old Church chant Incipit Lamentatio, sung during Matins on Maundy Thursday. Mindful of the somber emotional base of the work, Edward Downes noted of this quotation, “We do not know what connotation the melody had for Haydn here, but it can hardly have been a merry one.”

The finale resumes the turbulent mood of the first movement, proceeding through exposition (this time with contrasting theme), development and recapitulation. This last section halts abruptly on an incomplete harmony, after which the extended coda (in A major, then F-sharp major) allows for the departure of the musicians until only two solo violins remain, “certainly the loneliest sound in all of Haydn, and perhaps in the whole of music.”

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)

Konzertstück (“Concert Piece”) for Four Horns and Orchestra in F major, Op. 86 Robert Schumann was born on June 8, 1810 in Zwickau, Germany, and died on July 29, 1856 in Endenich, near Bonn. The Konzertstück was composed in 1849 and premiered on February 25, 1850 in Leipzig. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two orchestral horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration is about 19 minutes. The last performance by the orchestra was November 21-23, 2003, conducted by Patrick Summers with solo horns by Michael Thorton, Kristin Junksheit, Carolyn Landis, and David Brussel.

During Schumann’s residence in Dresden, from 1844 to 1850, he was naturally in frequent contact with the local musicians. Richard Wagner, filled with revolutionary political and musical ideas, was conductor at the Royal Opera House, which boasted one of the finest orchestras on the Continent at the time. A chief adornment of that ensemble was a player named Lewy, a virtuoso who headed up the orchestra’s horn section and was also one of the earliest exponents of the recently developed valved instrument. Schumann was so impressed with the possibilities of the improved horn, and with the expressive avenues for it that Wagner had opened in his operas (Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser had all been staged by 1845), that he