Program notes by J. Mark Baker

This weekend, guest conductor Roderick Cox is joined by pianist Inon Barnatan for a showcase of frenzied seduction, serene lyricism, and compelling majesty. The first half includes an early tone poem by Richard Strauss and a beguiling concerto by Beethoven. After intermission, we’ll soak up Sibelius’s natureinfused Symphony No. 5.

Richard Strauss

Born 11 June 1864; Munich, German

Died 8 September 1949; Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

Don Juan, Opus 20

Composed: 1888

First performance: 11 November 1889; Weimar, Germany

Last MSO performance: January 2019; Carlos Kalmar, conductor

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn); 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; contrabassoon; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; tuba; timpani; percussion (cymbals, glockenspiel, suspended cymbals, triangle); harp; strings

Approximate duration: 17 minutes

Richard Strauss was only 24 when he composed the tone poem Don Juan, his first important work. He cited Nikalaus Lenau’s (1802-1850) German verse play as his source of inspiration, but we should also duly note that Strauss had conducted Mozart’s Don Giovanni in Munich not long before he set to work on Don Juan. Strauss prefaced the published score with excerpts from Lenau’s poem; they include such intriguing lines as “The charmed circle of many kinds of beautiful, stimulating femininity ... I should like to traverse them in a storm of pleasure, and die of a kiss upon the lips of the last woman.” Lenau’s verses are more like reflections on amorous pursuits than lists of the titular character’s womanizing conquests.

The swirling, energetic opening theme is meant to portray Don Juan himself. This motif soon yields to a romantic melody, first introduced by a solo violin. A gentle oboe suggests a nighttime assignation. Insistent horns then break the mood as they intone a bold, self-assured theme. Melodies are restated and mingled together, always borne along by the composer’s matchless orchestration.

In Lenau’s poem, Don Juan, tired of chasing women, allows himself to be defeated in a duel. Strauss’s tone poem depicts this with a piercing stab from the trumpets. He drops, trembling, to the ground. The atmosphere becomes quiet and forlorn, signifying the protagonist’s imminent demise; it’s a disconsolate ending rather than a fortissimo finale. The music’s final phrases grow ever softer, concluding with what sounds like the last breaths of a dying man. Don Juan’s life was over, but Strauss’s magnificent career had just begun.

Ludwig Van Beethoven

Baptized 17 December 1770; Bonn, Germany

Died 26 March 1827; Vienna, Austria

Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Opus 58

Composed: 1805-06

First performance: 6 March 1807; palace of Prince Lobkowitz, Vienna (private)

22 December 1808; Vienna, Austria (public)

Last MSO performance: May 2017; Edo de Waart, conductor; Ronald Brautigam, piano

Instrumentation: flute; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 34 minutes

Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 dates from around the same time as the Waldstein and Appassionata piano sonatas, the Triple Concerto, Opus 56, the three string quartets, Opus 59 (“Razumovsky”), and the Violin Concerto, Opus 61. The composer dedicated the work to his friend, patron, and pupil Archduke Rudolph of Austria. Its first public performance took place on a four-hour marathon concert that also included the first performances of Symphonies No. 5 and No. 6, the Choral Fantasy, Opus 80, the soprano concert aria Ah, perfido!, and portions of the Mass in C, Opus 86. At the still-young age of 38, it was the last time Beethoven would appear as a concerto soloist due to his increasing deafness.

In his landmark book The Classical Style (1972), Charles Rosen wryly observes, “the most important fact about the concerto form is that the audience waits for the soloist to enter.” In the exquisitely lyrical opening phrases of the G major piano concerto, Beethoven offers a gentle rebuff to Rosen’s axiom, beginning with the piano alone. The orchestra enters four bars later, quietly echoing the soloist’s motif, but in the strikingly distant key of B major. Only after several pages does the texture grow into a full tutti and a true conversation between the piano and orchestra begin.

The compelling E minor Andante con moto – a literal dialogue between piano and strings – in the 19th century was said to depict Orpheus (soloist) taming the Furies (strings). Beethoven scholar Lewis Lockwood posits an equally intriguing notion, equating the second movement to an operatic scena in which “entreaty is met at first by obdurate refusal … The rhetorical character of the movement, like no other in Beethoven, invites association with tradition, and one of these may well have been that of the expressive aria with strings from Mozart’s late Italian works.”

Any remaining oppositions are reconciled in the sprightly rondo-finale. It begins softly, with a lively motif in the strings. Then, for the first time in the concerto, the trumpets and timpani make their entrance. The fleet, energetic piano is afforded ample opportunity for virtuoso display as Beethoven’s soulful and captivating Opus 58 dashes to its conclusion.

Jean Sibelius

Born 8 December 1865; Hämeenlinna, Finland

Died 20 September 1957; Järvenpää, Finland

Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Opus 82

Composed: 1915; revised 1916, 1919

Premiere: 8 December 1915; Helsinki, Finland

(original version)

24 November 1919; Helsinki, Finland (final version)

Last MSO performance: January 2013; Francesco Lecce-Chong, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 3 trumpets; 3 trombones; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 30 minutes

Jean Sibelius was born into a Swedish-speaking family in a hamlet in south-central Finland. The man who would become the most famous Finn in history did not begin to speak the Finnish language until age eight and acquired complete proficiency in the language only as a young man. Though he was closely identified with Finnish nationalism, it wasn’t because he wrote folksy musical bonbons – or even commanding pieces like his well-known Finlandia. No, his stature rests chiefly on his accomplishment as a composer of that most serious of musical genres – the symphony.

Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony – probably the second-most popular, after Symphony No. 2 – dates from the years of World War I, his only major composition during this time. Because of the national hostilities, Sibelius lost revenue from his German publishers Breitkopf & Härtel; his conducting commitments abroad were also curtailed. As a result, he targeted the domestic market, penning a great deal of piano music and of violin and piano miniatures. Originally cast in four movements, Sibelius’s Opus 82 was completed in time for his 50th birthday (8 December 1915) – an occasion that was treated almost as a national holiday; he conducted the work’s premiere in Helsinki. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with his original efforts, however, and over the next few years made revisions. What had been four movements became three, as he linked together the two opening movements, making the work bolder and more confident. There’s a lot a take in: listen for the various layers of orchestral color – strings, brass, winds – and how they both interweave and act separately. In the strings, the timbral qualities of tremolos are also fascinating, as they move back and forth from primary to secondary material. Throughout, the dynamic contrasts range from ppp to fff.

The second movement is a lovely pastoral interlude in G major. Formally, we might think of it as a set of variations on a five-note motif, first sounded by the violas and cellos, pizzicato. Though much of the music is decidedly arcadian, for contrast there is the occasional darkening of both harmony and orchestration. There is also a bit of what Igor Stravinsky, who was fond of some of Sibelius’s music, once referred to as “Italian-melody-gone-north.”

It is no secret that Sibelius was frequently inspired by his native homeland. Indeed, the Finnish landscape is often palpable in his music. Nature thus infuses the most famous motif of his Fifth Symphony, the so-called “Swan Hymn.” He explained this in a 1915 diary entry: “Today at ten to eleven, I saw 16 swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon.” Sibelius depicts this with a swinging, endlessly repeating ostinato in the horns, as a beautiful descant in the woodwinds and violins sails above. In the symphony’s final pages, we’re back in the home key of E-flat major as brass and timpani hammer out the swan theme. At the very end, six decisive chords from the full orchestra bring this powerful work to a stirring conclusion.