Program Details

SHOSTAKOVICH: Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 Eroica

SHOSTAKOVICH: Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a

Chamber Symphony for Strings in C minor, Op. 110a (after String Quartet No. 8, Op. 110) (1960; arr. 1967) (Arranged by Rudolf Barshai)

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

In July 1960, Shostakovich was in Dresden composing the score for a joint Soviet–East German film about the Second World War called Five Days, Five Nights. So moved was he by the subject of the story and by the still-unhealed scars of the city, which the Allies had reduced to rubble in 1945 in a single night of the most fearsome bombing in the history of warfare, that he poured his feelings into the musical form that he had entrusted with his most personal thoughts — the string quartet. The Eighth Quartet was composed in three days in Dresden and dedicated to “the memory of the victims of fascism and the war.” It was premiered on October 2nd in Leningrad by the Beethoven Quartet, though the composer had to miss the performance because he was hospitalized to treat a broken leg he had suffered in September at the wedding of his son, Maxim.

In Testimony, Shostakovich’s purported memoirs, the composer stated that the Eighth is “an autobiographical quartet.” Without giving elucidating details, he implied that its essential message is carried by the title of a well-known song of the Russian Revolution that he quoted in the fourth movement: Exhausted by the Hardships of Prison. The chief motive running through the Quartet, and providing the germ for much of its thematic material, is Shostakovich’s musical “signature” — DSCH, the notes D–E-flat– C–B. (The note D represents his initial. In German transliteration, the composer’s name begins “Sch”: S [ess] in German notation equals E-flat, C is C, and H equals B-natural.)

The Quartet is in five continuous movements. The DSCH motive is heard immediately in imitation in the somber opening of the first movement. Three other themes provide contrast: a quotation in dotted rhythms from the First Symphony; an eerie descending chromatic scale; and a reminiscence of the Fifth Symphony. The four thematic elements are recapitulated and lead without pause to a furious toccata, brutal, hammering music depicting the destruction of war. The third movement is a scherzo, by turns sardonic and lyrical. The slow fourth movement explodes with an accompaniment figure transmogrified into gunshots. The three lower voices in unison play a melody from the Eleventh Symphony (“The Year 1905”) of 1957. After a repetition of the gunshots, the Russian song Exhausted by the Hardships of Prison is intoned by the first violins. The gunshots, the Russian Revolutionary song, and the Eleventh Symphony motive in condensed versions serve as the movement’s coda. The finale eschews Romantic apotheosis in favor of 20th-century doubt. The austere mood and the DSCH theme of the first movement return, and the music seems hardly able to maintain its forward motion. Its energy dissipated, perhaps through catharsis or just from weariness, the music dies away on an inconclusive, open-interval harmony.

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 Eroica

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, “Eroica” (1803-1804)

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

The “Eroica” (“Heroic”) is a work that changed the course of musical 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 19th century. For the first time, with this music, the master composer was recognized as an individual responding to a higher calling. After Beethoven, composers came to be regarded as visionaries — special beings lifted above mundane experience — who could guide benighted listeners to loftier planes of existence through their valued gifts. The modern conception of the Artist — what they are, their place in society, what they can do for those who experience their work — stems from Beethoven. Romanticism began with the “Eroica.”

The vast first movement opens with a 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 sense of titanic 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 Marcia funebre (“Funeral March”), with its plaintive 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 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, the first of which provides the bass line for the other. The second theme, introduced by the oboe, also appears in 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.

Artists

Jaap van Zweden, conductor

Over the past decade, Jaap van Zweden has been an international presence on three continents. Currently, he is Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, a post he began in 2018, and Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic since 2012.

Jaap van Zweden, conductor

Van Zweden has appeared as guest conductor with many other leading orchestras around the globe, among them the Orchestre de Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Jaap van Zweden has made numerous acclaimed recordings, the most recent of which are a 2020 release with the New York Philharmonic of the World Premiere of David Lang’s prisoner of the state, and the 2019 release of the World Premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth, continuing the Philharmonic’s partnership with Decca Gold. 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 as individual recordings as well as a complete set. His highly praised performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal, the latter of which earned Jaap van Zweden the prestigious Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012, are available on CD/DVD.

Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden was appointed at age nineteen as the youngest-ever concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He 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, served as Chief Conductor of the Royal Flanders Orchestra from 2008-11, and was Music Director from 2008-2018 of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra where he currently holds the title Conductor Laureate. Van Zweden was named Musical America's 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile. Recently, he was awarded the prestigious 2020 Concertgebouw Prize, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden’s leadership was named Gramophone’s 2019 Orchestra of the Year.

In 1997, Jaap van Zweden and his wife Aaltje established the Papageno Foundation, the objective being to support families of children with autism. Now, over 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. The Foundation provides in-home music therapy to children through a national network of qualified music therapists in the Netherlands; opened the Papageno House in August 2015 (with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance) for young adults with autism to live, work and participate in the community; created a research center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing the effects of music therapy on autism; develops funding opportunities to support autism programs; and launched the app, TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.

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VAN ZWEDEN’S RETURN: BEETHOVEN EROICA

NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

Wednesday, July 17 | 6:00PM

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877.812.5700

July

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Orchestra Concert

VAN ZWEDEN’S RETURN: BEETHOVEN EROICA

Program Details

SHOSTAKOVICH: Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a

BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 3 Eroica

Artists

Jaap van Zweden, conductor

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ORCHESTRA CONCERT FAQS