BRITTEN: Violin Concerto Op. 15

Violin Concerto, Op. 15 (1938-1939)

BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913-1976)

Benjamin Britten was 26 in 1939, and much unsettled about his life. Though he had already produced fourteen works important enough to be given opus numbers and a large additional amount of chamber music, choral works, songs, and film and theater scores, he felt his career was stymied both by an innate conservatism among the British music public and by the increasingly assured threat of war in Europe. Also troubling was his proclaimed pacificism in a nation girding itself for battle. In January 1939, his friends poet W.H. Auden and novelist Christopher Isherwood left for America in search of creative stimulation and freedom from what Auden called the English artist’s feeling of being “essentially lonely, twisted in dying roots.” Britten followed them in May, producing such important scores as the Violin Concerto, Les Illuminations, Michelangelo Sonnets, Sinfonia da Requiem and Ceremony of Carols during his three years in this country.

The Violin Concerto’s broad, darkly noble first movement begins with a succinct, open-interval motive in the timpani that recurs throughout as a motto. Above the bassoon’s muttering repetitions of the motto, the violin presents the main theme, a melody made from a series of short, smooth, mostly descending phrases. The second subject is constructed from extensive elaborations of the rhythms and intervals in the motto. A climax is built from this material in the development before the recapitulation begins with roles reversed from the exposition: upper strings play the main theme while the soloist hammers out aggressive permutations of the motto. The second subject is omitted in the recapitulation, but the violin reclaims the main theme in the coda, intoning it above a sparse accompaniment of timpani, harp and plucked strings. The second movement is a driving, virtuosic, slightly sinister scherzo for which the more relaxed central section provides formal and expressive contrast. A brilliant cadenza that recalls the timpani motto and the main theme from the first movement serves as a bridge to the finale. The somber finale is a passacaglia, a formal technique using a series of variations on a short, recurring melody. Britten fitted this passacaglia with nine variations on a stern scalar theme, and gave the music a serious emotional cast that seems to have reflected his sorrow over the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, which reached its bloody climax when he was completing the Concerto. “It is at times like these,” he said, “that work is so important — so that people can think of other things than blowing each other up! ... I try not to listen to the radio more than I can help.” Though Britten was only 27 when he composed his Violin Concerto, the work shows that he was already a master of reflecting the human condition in music of technical polish and emotional depth.

RACHMANINOFF: Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Opus 27

Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 (1906-1908)

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)

Early in 1906, Rachmaninoff decided to sweep away the rapidly accumulating obligations of conducting, concertizing and socializing that cluttered his life in Moscow in order to find some quiet place in which to devote himself to composition. His determination may have been strengthened by the political unrest beginning to rumble under the foundations of the aristocratic Russian political system. The uprising of 1905 was among the first signs of trouble for those of his noble class (he eventually moved to the United States as a result of the swallowing of his family’s estate and resources by the 1917 Revolution), and he thought it a good time to start looking for a quiet haven.

A few years before, Rachmaninoff had been inspired by a performance of Die Meistersinger he heard at the Dresden Opera. The memory of that evening and the aura of dignity and repose exuded by the city remained with him, and Dresden, at that time, seemed like a good place to be. The atmosphere there was so conducive to composition that within a few months of his arrival he was working on the Second Symphony, First Piano Sonata, Op. 6, Russian folk songs and symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead. The Second Symphony was unanimously cheered when it was premiered under his direction in St. Petersburg on February 7, 1908.

The Symphony’s majestic scale is established by a brooding introduction. A smooth transition to a faster tempo signals the arrival of the main theme, an extended and quickened transformation of the basses’ opening motive; the expressive second theme enters in the woodwinds. The development deals largely with the vigorous main theme. The second movement is the most nimble essay in Rachmaninoff’s orchestral works. After two preparatory measures, the horns sound the main theme. Eventually, the rhythmic bustle is suppressed to make way for the central section, whose skipping lines embody some of Rachmaninoff’s best fugal writing. The Adagio is music of heightened passion that resembles an operatic love scene. Alternating with the joyous principal melody is an important theme from the first movement, heard in the central portion and the coda. The finale bursts forth in the whirling rhythm of an Italian tarantella. The propulsive urgency subsides to allow another of Rachmaninoff’s finest melodic inspirations to enter. A development of the tarantella motives follows, into which are embroidered thematic reminiscences from each of the three preceding movements. The several elements of the finale are gathered together in the closing pages.

Jaap van Zweden, Conductor

Conductor Jaap van Zweden has become an international presence on three continents over the past decade.  The 2018-19 season marks his first as the 26th Music Director of the New York Philharmonic.  He continues as Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, a post he has held since 2012.   Guest engagements this season include the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, San Francisco Symphony, and Dallas Symphony Orchestra where he is Conductor Laureate. 

He has appeared as guest conductor with many other leading orchestras around the globe, among them the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, Orchestre national de France, and London Symphony Orchestra. 

In his inaugural season as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden conducts repertoire ranging from five World Premieres to symphonic cornerstones. He also presides over three major season pillars that contextualize music through a variety of programs complemented by citywide collaborations. Music of Conscience explores composers’ responses to the social issues of their time, with music by Beethoven, Shostakovich, John Corigliano, and David Lang. New York Stories: Threads of Our City looks at musical expressions of the immigrant experience in New York, with music by Julia Wolfe. The Art of Andriessen spotlights the music of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen.  Maestro van Zweden also welcomes New Yorkers to Phil the Hall — special concerts for the community — and to the Annual Free Memorial Day Concert, as well as the Concerts in the Parks. 

Jaap van Zweden has made numerous acclaimed recordings, the most recent of which are live New York Philharmonic performances of Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7 released on CD and for streaming and download in February 2018; this release launches the Philharmonic’s partnership with Decca Gold, Universal Music Group’s newly established U.S. classical music label. In 2018 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, he completed a four-year project conducting the first-ever performances in Hong Kong of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, which have been recorded and released on Naxos Records.  His highly praised performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal, the latter of which earned Maestro van Zweden the prestigious Edison award for Best Opera Recording in 2012, are available on CD/DVD. 

The Amsterdam-born van Zweden was appointed at age nineteen as the youngest concertmaster ever of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and began his conducting career nearly twenty years later in 1996. He remains Honorary Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, where he served as Chief Conductor from 2005-2013. He also held the Chief Conductor post of the Royal Flanders Orchestra from 2008-11.  Van Zweden was named Musical America's 2012 Conductor of the Year in recognition of his critically acclaimed work as Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and as guest conductor with the most prestigious US orchestras. 

In 1997, Jaap van Zweden and his wife Aaltje established the Papageno Foundation, the objective being to support families of children with autism. Now, 20 years later, the Foundation has grown into a multi-faceted organization which, through various initiatives and activities, focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism.  These initiatives include: providing music therapy to children in their own homes via a national network in The Netherlands of qualified music therapists; opening the Papageno House, in August 2015 with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance, for young adults with autism to live, to work and to participate in the community; creating a  research  center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing  the effects of music therapy on autism; developing funding opportunities to support autism programs; and most recently launching a new app, TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.

Photo: Bert Hulselmans

Augustin Hadelich, Violin