Program Notes - Beethoven Symphony No. 3, "Eroica"

CLASSICS 2022/23

BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 3 WITH PETER OUNDJIAN PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor

STERLING ELLIOTT, cello COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS, DUAIN WOLFE, director

Friday, November 4, 2022 at 7:30pm

Saturday, November 5, 2022 at 7:30pm Sunday, November 6 2022 at 1:00pm Boettcher Concert Hall

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Toward the Unknown Region

ELGAR Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85

I. Adagio; Moderato

II. Lento; Allegro molto III. Adagio IV. Allegro; Moderato; Allegro, ma non troppo

— INTERMISSION —

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, “Eroica”

I. Allegro con brio

II. Marcia funebre: Adagio assai III. Scherzo: Allegro vivace

IV. Finale: Allegro molto

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 1 HOUR AND 51 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION

FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 7 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT!

Friday’s concert is dedicated to the Butler Family Fund oF the denver Foundation saturday’s concert is dedicated to 5280 magazine sunday’s concert is dedicated to dr. mark myerson & dr. shuyuan li

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PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor

Recognized as a masterful and dynamic presence in the conducting world, Peter Oundjian has developed a multi-faceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor and artistic advisor. He has been celebrated for his musicality, an eye towards collaboration, innovative programming, leadership and training with students and an engaging personality. Strengthening his ties to Colorado, Oundjian is now Principal Conductor of the Colorado Symphony in addition to Music Director of the Colorado Music Festival, which successfully pivoted to a virtual format during the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021.

Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus, Oundjian’s fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony served as a major creative force for the city of Toronto and was marked by a reimagining of the TSO’s programming, international stature, audience development, touring and a number of outstanding recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and a Juno award for Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works in 2019. He led the orchestra on several international tours to Europe and the USA, conducting the first performance by a North American orchestra at Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall in 2014.

From 2012-2018, Oundjian served as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during which time he implemented the kind of collaborative programming that has become a staple of his directorship. Oundjian led the RSNO on several international tours, including North America, China, and a European festival tour with performances at the Bregenz Festival, the Dresden Festival as well as in Innsbruck, Bergamo, Ljubljana, and others. His final appearance with the orchestra as their Music Director was at the 2018 BBC Proms where he conducted Britten’s epic War Requiem.

Highlights of past seasons include appearances with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Iceland Symphony, the Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. With the onset of world-wide concert cancellations, support for students at Yale and Juilliard became a priority. In 2022/2023 season Oundjian will conduct the opening weekend of Atlanta Symphony, followed by return engagements with Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, Colorado and Toronto symphonies, as well as a visit to New World Symphony.

Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. A dedicated educator, Oundjian regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis and New World symphony orchestras.

An outstanding violinist, Oundjian spent fourteen years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy towards conducting.

PHOTO:

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STERLING ELLIOT, cello

Acclaimed for his stellar stage presence and joyous musicianship, cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition. Already in his young career, he has appeared with such major orchestras as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony, and the Dallas Symphony, with noted conductors Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Thomas Wilkins, Jeffrey Kahane, Bramwell Tovey, Mei Ann Chen and others. This summer, he made his Aspen Festival debut, performing the Brahms

Double Concerto with Gil Shaham, and he made his German debut in Munich in May 2022, performing chamber music with Daniel Hope.

The 2022-2023 season will see his debuts with the Colorado Symphony, Cincinnati Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, and Ft. Worth Symphony, among others, with return appearances including the Buffalo Philharmonic. He will appear in recital under the auspices of the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, Shriver Hall in Baltimore, the Tippett Rise Festival and Capitol Region Classical in Albany, NY. In October he participates in the Caramoor Music Festival’s prestigious Evnin Rising Stars series, a weeklong program of coaching and chamber music culminating in a performance in Katonah, NY.

Fast becoming a favorite on the summer festival circuit, Sterling has appeared at Music@Menlo, Chamberfest in Cleveland and Chamberfest Northwest in Calgary, Music at Angel Fire and the La Jolla Music Society.

As the youngest of three siblings, Sterling did not want to play the cello but the violin like his older brother and sister. After a bit of encouragement, he completed The Elliott Family String Quartet by learning to play the cello at the age of three under the direction of Suzuki Cello teacher Susan Hines.

He went on to make his concerto debut at the age of 7 by winning the Junior Division of the PYO Concerto Competition, and later the 2014 Richmond Symphony Concerto Competition and the Bay Youth Orchestra of Virginia Concerto Competition.

Sterling has a long history with the Sphinx Organization where he first received 2nd place in the 2013 National Sphinx Competition Junior Division, then won the 2014 Junior Division. In 2016 he received the Organization’s Isaac Stern Award and toured with the Sphinx Virtuosi in 2018 before winning in 2019.

Sterling is a two-time alum of NPR’s From the Top where he was a recipient of a scholarship from The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and performed several concerts in Switzerland at the 2019 World Economic Forum. He is a Young Strings of America ambassador for SHAR Strings.

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In 2019, he was the first recipient of The National Arts Club’s Herman and Mary Neuman Music Scholarship Award. In Spring 2022, Sterling participated in Performance Today’s Young Artist Residency, which featured educational events, interviews and a feature on the nationally syndicated radio program.

Sterling Elliott is currently a Kovner Fellow at the Juilliard School where he is pursuing his Master of Music degree studying with Joel Krosnick and Clara Kim. He completed his undergraduate degree in cello performance at Juilliard in May 2021. He currently performs on a 1741 Gennaro Gagliano cello on loan through the Robert F. Smith Fine String Patron Program, in partnership with the Sphinx Organization.

DUAIN WOLFE, founder and director, Colorado Symphony Chorus

Three-time Grammy winner for Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Recording, and Best Opera Performance, Duain Wolfe is Founder and Director of the Colorado Symphony Chorus.

This year marks Wolfe’s 39th season with the Colorado Symphony Chorus. The Chorus has been featured at the Aspen Music Festival for nearly three decades. Wolfe recently retired as Director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus after 28 years. He has collaborated with Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, and Sir George Solti on numerous recordings including Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which won the 1998 Grammy® for Best Opera Recording. Wolfe’s extensive musical accomplishments have resulted in numerous awards, including the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Denver, the Bonfils Stanton Award in the Arts and Humanities, the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in an Artistic Discipline, and the Michael Korn Award for the Development of the Professional Choral Art. Wolfe is Founder of the Colorado Children’s Chorale, from which he retired in 1999 after 25 years. For 20 years, Wolfe also worked with the Central City Opera Festival as chorus director and conductor, founding and directing the company’s young artist residence program, as well as its education and outreach programs. Wolfe’s other accomplishments include directing and preparing choruses for Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, the Bravo! Vail Festival, the Berkshire Choral Festival, the Aspen Music Festival, and the Grand Teton Music Festival. He has worked with Pinchas Zuckerman and Alexander Shelly as Chorus Director for the Canadian National Arts Centre Orchestra for the past 20 years.

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COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS

The 2022/23 Colorado Symphony concert season marks the 39th season of the Colorado Symphony Chorus. Founded in 1984 by Duain Wolfe at the request of Gaetano Delogu, then the Music Director of the Symphony, the chorus has grown into a nationally respected ensemble. This outstanding chorus of volunteers joins the Colorado Symphony for numerous performances each year, to repeated critical acclaim.

The Chorus has performed at noted music festivals in the Rocky Mountain region, including the Colorado Music Festival, the Grand Teton Music Festival, and the Bravo! Vail Music Festival, where it has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Dallas Symphony, under conductors Alan Gilbert, Hans Graf, Jaap van Zweden, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Fabio Luisi. For over twenty five years, the Chorus was featured at the world-renowned Aspen Music Festival, performing many great masterworks under the baton of conductors Lawrence Foster, James Levine, Murry Sidlin, Leonard Slatkin, David Zinman, and Robert Spano.

Among the eight recordings the Colorado Symphony Chorus has made is a NAXOS release of Roy Harris’s Symphony No. 4. The Chorus is also featured on a Hyperion release of the Vaughan Williams Dona Nobis Pacem and Stephen Hough’s Missa Mirabilis. Most recently, the Colorado Symphony and Chorus released a world-premiere recording of William Hill’s The Raven.

In 2009, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the chorus, Duain Wolfe conducted the chorus on a three-country, two-week concert tour of Europe, presenting the Verdi Requiem in Budapest, Vienna, Litomysl and Prague; in 2016 the chorus returned to Europe for concerts in Paris, Strasbourg and Munich featuring the Fauré Requiem. In the summer of 2022, the Chorus toured Austria, performing to great acclaim in Vienna, Graz and Salzburg.

CLASSICS CHORUS ROSTER

COLORADO SYMPHONY CHORUS

Duain Wolfe, Founding Director and Conductor

Mary Louise Burke, Principal Associate Director and Conductor

Taylor Martin, Associate Director and Conductor

Jared Joseph, Conducting Intern

Hsiao-Ling Lin and ShaoChun Tsai Schneider, pianists

Eric Israelson, Chorus Manager/Librarian

Barbara Porter, Associate Chorus Managers

SOPRANO

Lori Ascani

René Atchison

Kimberly Black Jude Blum Alex Bowen

Denelda Causey Ruth Coberly Sarah Coberly Elizabeth Collins Suzanne Collins

Angie Collums Kerry Cote Claudia Dakkouri Mary Dobreff

Emily Eck Kate Emerich Gracie Ewert

Leontine Galante Andria Gaskill

Jenifer Gile

Lori Gill Susan Graber Alaina Headrick Mary Heintzkill

Erin Hittle

Alicia Irigoyen

Kaitlyn Jones

Cameron Jordan Colleen Keefe

Lindsey Kermgard Meghan Kinnischtzke

Lisa Kraft Marina Kushnir

Leanne Lang

Dana Linder

Cathy Look

Rebecca Machusko

Anne Maupin

Erin Montigne

Wendy Moraskie Christine Nyholm

Jeannette O'Nan

Jodie Peterson

Kim Pflug Barbara Porter Donneve Rae Andi Rooney Lori Ropa Sarah Roth Roberta Sladovnik Nicole Stegink Judy Tate Sydney Timme Stacey Travis Susan von Roedern Marcia Walker Alison Wall Rebecca Wise Sandy Woodrow Karen Wuertz

Joan Zisler

ALTO

Priscilla Adams

Brenda Berganza Charlotte Braud Cass Chatfield

Jayne Conrad Martha Cox Janie Darone Barbara Deck Raleigh Fairchild Sisie Frey Anna Friedman Sharon Gayley Daniela Golden Gabriella Groom

Pat Guittar Sheri Haxton

Kaia Hoopes Hansi Hoskins

Brandy Jackson Ellen Janasko Christine Kaminske

Annette Kim

Andrea LeBaron

Juliet Levy

Carole London Tinsley Long

Joanna Maltzahn Emily McNulty Susan McWaters Kristen Nordenholz Sheri Owens Jill Parsons Sydney Peitier Jennifer Pringle Kathi Rudolph Elizabeth Scarselli Melanie Stevenson Deanna Thaler Mary Thayer Clara Tiggelaar Kimberly Trubetskoy Pat Virtue Benita Wandel Evin Worthington Beth York

TENOR

Gary Babcock Nolan Baker Ryan Bowman James Carlson

Dusty Davies Jack Dinkel Roger Fuehrer John Gale Frank Gordon Forrest Guittar David Hodel Tony Hughes Sami Ibrahim Trey Johnson Kenneth Kolm Tom Milligan Richard Moraskie Garvis Muesing

Lucas Myers

Timothy Nicholas Miguel Rangel Dallas Rehberg Tyler Richardson Eugene Roach

Ronald Ruth Andrew Seamans

Jerry Sims Kyle Shaw Philip Stohlmann Hannis Thompson Kenneth Zimmerman BASS John Adams Robert Friedlander Matthew Gray Tim Griffin Chris Grossman

Douglas Hesse David Highbaugh Leonard Hunt Eric Israelson Terry Jackson Thomas Jirak

John Jones

Jared Joseph Paul Lingenfelter

Nalin Mehta

Matthew Molberg Greg Morrison Taylor Nelson Eugene Nuccio John Phillips

Ben Pilcher

Tom Potter Kenneth Quarles Joshua Richards Russell Skillings Matthew Smedberg David Struthers Wil Swanson

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RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (1872-1958)

Toward the Unknown Region for Chorus and Orchestra Ralph Vaughan Williams was born October 12, 1872 in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire and died August 26, 1958 in London. He made this setting of a passage from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1905-1906, and conducted its premiere on October 10, 1907 in Leeds. The score calls for three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, two harps, organ and strings. Duration is about 14 minutes. This is the Colorado Symphony premiere.

It was while Vaughan Williams was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the 1890s that he was introduced to the poetry of Walt Whitman by his fellow student Bertrand Russell. Whitman’s verses were enjoying a considerable vogue in England at that time, and Vaughan Williams was not immune to the lure of the American poet’s daring topics and experimental poetic structures, nor to his themes of mysticism, human dignity, love and freedom. The budding musician acquired several editions of Leaves of Grass, including one small selection that he carried with him constantly for a time.

As early as 1903 — the year in which Delius brought out his Whitman-based Sea Drift — Vaughan Williams was considering a large-scale work for chorus and orchestra using the words of the American writer. As the basis of this proposed composition, tentatively titled “Songs of the Sea,” he chose passages from Leaves of Grass that philosophically likened an ocean voyage to the individual’s journey of life. Both the topic and its musical realization were imposing artistic challenges for Vaughan Williams, who, at age 31, had written only some songs, chamber pieces and small works for orchestra. He sketched a few preliminary ideas for the new work, but was unable to bring the piece to completion.

Two years later, Vaughan Williams turned his attention to another poem from Leaves of Grass, Whispers of Heavenly Death, and set a passage from it as “A Song for Chorus and Orchestra” titled Toward the Unknown Region. The work brought him to the front rank of young English composers when he conducted its premiere at the prestigious Leeds Festival on October 10, 1907, and its success encouraged him to again take up his earlier Whitman piece, which he completed in 1910 as A Sea Symphony; he returned to Whitman again in the mid-1930s when he included some of his verses in the war-wary Dona Nobis Pacem.

Toward the Region Unknown parallels the emotional progression of Whitman’s visionary text from apprehensive uncertainty to spiritual enlightenment in words that are “non-religious but ethically aspiring,” according to English musicologist Diana McVeagh. The opening stanzas of the text are cloaked in the modal harmonies in which Vaughan Williams had been immersed while researching British folk music during the preceding three years, mixed with a certain amount of Romantic chromaticism. For the closing verse — Then we burst forth, we float — Vaughan Williams provided a broad, striding melody that brings the work to a fervently confident close.

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TOWARD THE UNKNOWN REGION Music by Ralph Vaughan Williams Text by Walt Whitman

Darest thou now, O soul, Walk out with me toward the unknown region, Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?

No map there, nor guide, Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not, O soul, Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.

Till when the ties loosen, All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.

Then we burst forth, we float, In Time and Space O soul, prepared for them, Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfill O soul.



EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934)

Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85

Edward Elgar was born June 2, 1857 in Broadheath, England and died February 23, 1934 in Worcester. He began his Cello Concerto during the winter of 1918-1919 at his home in London, and completed it in August 1919 at his summer retreat, Brinkwells, near Fittleworth, Sussex. The composer conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in the premiere on October 27, 1919, with Felix Salmond as soloist. The score calls for piccolo, two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. Duration is about 30 minutes. This piece was last performed by the orchestra March 14-16, 2014, with Andrew Litton conducting and Paul Watkins playing cello.

It seemed that Elgar’s world was crumbling in 1918. The four years of World War I had left him, as so many others, weary and numb from the crush of events. Many of his friends of German ancestry were put through a bad time in England during those years; others whom he knew were killed or maimed in action. The traditional foundations of the British political

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system were skewed by the rise of socialism directly after the war, and Elgar saw his beloved Edwardian world drawing to a close. (He resembles that titan among fin-de-siècle musicians, Gustav Mahler, in his mourning of a passing age.) His music seemed anachronistic in an era of polychords and dodecaphony, a remnant of stuffy conservatism, and his 70th birthday concert in Queen’s Hall attracted only half a house. The health of his wife, his chief helpmate, inspiration and critic, began to fail, and with her passing in 1920, Elgar virtually stopped composing. The Cello Concerto, written just before his wife’s death, is Elgar’s last major work, and seems both to summarize his disillusion over the calamities of World War I and to presage the unhappiness of his last years.

Large sections of the Concerto are given over to the solitary ruminations of the cello in the form of recitative-like passages, such as the one that opens the work. The forms of the Concerto’s four movements only suggest traditional models in their epigrammatic concentration. The first movement is a ternary structure (A–B–A), commencing after the opening recitative. A limpid, undulating theme (Moderato) is given by the lower strings as the material for the first and third sections of the form, while a related melody (with dotted rhythms) appears first in the woodwinds in the central portion.

The first movement is linked directly to the second (Allegro molto). It takes several tries before the music of the second movement is able to maintain its forward motion, but when it does, it proves to be a skittering, moto perpetuo display piece for the soloist. It is music, however, which, for all its hectic activity, seems strangely earth-bound, a sort of wild merriment not quite capable of banishing the dolorous thoughts of the opening movement. The almost-motionless stillness of the following Adagio returns to the introspection of the opening movement. It, in the words of Herbert Byard, “seems to express the grief that is too deep for tears.” The finale, like the opening, is prefaced by a recitative for the soloist. The movement’s form following this introductory section is based on the Classical rondo, and makes a valiant attempt at the “hail-and-well-met” vigor of Elgar’s earlier march music. Like the scherzando second movement, however, it seems more a nostalgic recollection of past abilities than a display of remaining powers. Toward the end, the stillness of the third movement creeps over the music, and the soloist indulges in an extended soliloquy. Brief bits of earlier movements are remembered before a final recall of the fast rondo music closes this thoughtful Concerto.

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LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, “Eroica”

Ludwig van Beethoven was born December 16, 1770 in Bonn and died March 26, 1827 in Vienna. He began work on his Third Symphony in 1803 and completed it during the spring of the following year. It was first heard at a private concert in Vienna conducted by the composer in December 1804 at the palace of Prince Joseph Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven’s most important early patrons. Beethoven also conducted the public premiere on April 7, 1805 at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. The score calls for woodwinds and trumpets in pairs, three horns, timpani and strings. Duration is about 47 minutes. The Symphony last performed this piece December 4-6, 2015. Rossen Milanov was the conductor.

The year 1804 — the time Beethoven finished his Third Symphony — was crucial in the modern political history of Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte had begun his meteoric rise to power only a decade earlier, after playing a significant part in the recapture in 1793 of Toulon, a Mediterranean port that had been surrendered to the British by French royalists. Britain, along with Austria, Prussia, Holland and Spain, was a member of the First Coalition, an alliance that had been formed by those monarchial nations in the wake of the execution of Louis XVI to thwart the French National Convention’s ambition to spread revolution (and royal overthrow) throughout Europe. In 1796, Carnot entrusted the campaign against northern Italy, then dominated by Austria, to the young General Bonaparte, who won a stunning series of victories with an army that he had transformed from a demoralized, starving band into a military juggernaut. He returned to France in 1799 as First Consul of the newly established Consulate, and put in place measures to halt inflation, instituted a new legal code, and repaired relations with the Church. It was to this man, this great leader and potential savior of the masses from centuries of tyrannical political, social and economic oppression, that Beethoven intended to pay tribute in his majestic E-flat Symphony, begun in 1803. The name “Bonaparte” appears above that of the composer on the original title page.

Napoleon proclaimed himself Emperor of France in 1804 and was crowned, with the new Empress Josephine, at Notre Dame Cathedral on December 2nd, an event forever frozen in time by David’s magnificent canvas in the Louvre. Beethoven, enraged and feeling betrayed by this usurpation of power, roared at his student Ferdinand Ries, who brought him the news, “Then is he, too, only an ordinary human being?” The ragged hole in the title page of the score now in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna bears mute testimony to the violent manner in which Beethoven erased Napoleon from this Symphony. He later inscribed it, undoubtedly with much sorrow, “To celebrate the memory of a great man.”

The “Eroica” (“Heroic”) is a work that changed the course of music history. There was much sentiment at the turn of the 19th century that the expressive and technical possibilities of the symphonic genre had been exhausted by Haydn, Mozart, C.P.E. Bach and their contemporaries. It was Beethoven, and specifically this majestic Symphony, that threw wide the gates on the unprecedented artistic vistas that were to be explored for the rest of the century. In a single giant leap, he invested the genre with the breadth and richness of emotional and architectonic expression that established the grand sweep that the word “symphonic” connotes. For the first time, with this music, the master composer was recognized as an individual responding to a higher calling. No longer could the creative musician be considered a mere artisan in tones, producing pieces within the confines of the court or the church for specific occasions, much as a

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talented chef would dispense a hearty roast or a succulent torte. After Beethoven, the composer was regarded as a visionary — a special being lifted above mundane experience — who could guide benighted listeners to loftier planes of existence through his valued gifts. The modern conception of artists — what they do, their place in society, how they can affect those who experience their work — stems from Beethoven. Romanticism began with the “Eroica.”

The vast first movement opens with a brief summons of two mighty chords. At least four thematic ideas are presented in the exposition. The development is a massive essay progressing through many moods, all united by a titanic sense of struggle. It is in this central portion of the movement and in the lengthy coda that Beethoven broke through the boundaries of the 18th-century symphony to create a work not only longer in duration but also more profound in meaning. The beginning of the second movement — “Marcia funebre” (“Funeral March”) — with its plaintive, simple themes intoned over a mock drum-roll in the basses, is the touchstone for the expression of tragedy in instrumental music. A development-like section, full of remarkable contrapuntal complexities, is followed by a return of the simple opening threnody. The third movement is a lusty scherzo; the central section is a rousing trio for horns. The finale is a large set of variations on two themes, one of which (the first one heard) forms the bass line to the other. The second theme, introduced by the oboe, is a melody that also appears in the finale of Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Contradanse No. 7 and Variations and Fugue, Op. 35. The variations accumulate energy, and, just as it seems the movement is whirling toward its final climax, the music comes to a full stop before launching into an Andante section that explores first the tender and then the majestic possibilities of the themes. A brilliant Presto led by the horns concludes this epochal work.

©2022 Dr. Richard E. Rodda