Power and Beauty: Tchaikovsky and Beethoven

Henryk Mikolaj Górecki
b. Silesia, Poland / December 6, 1933; d. Katowice, Poland / November 12, 2010

Three Pieces in an Olden Style

Henryk Gorecki was a Polish composer most heavily influenced by Messiaen, though crafting a unique and dramatic, and very individual, compositional voice of his own over the years. Though very contemporary in his approach to composition and orchestration, Gorecki also venerated early music, sometimes incorporating early musical concepts and even medieval texts into his music.

His Three Pieces in an Olden Style were written for a string orchestra, incorporating folk elements and medieval church liturgy with modern compositional techniques. The Three Pieces are based on the following:

1) Lamentation of the Holy Cross Monastery,

2) Prayer of the eighteen year-old Helena Wanda Blazusiakowna inscribed on the wall of a Gestapo cell in Zakopane, and

3) Folk song in Opole Region dialect.

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky
b. Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia / May 7, 1840; d. St. Petersburg, Russia / November 6, 1893

Concerto No. 1 for Piano and Orchestra in B-flat minor, Op. 23

Ah, Tchaikovsky. Nothing ever seemed to come easy for this brilliant, tortured genius, including this remarkable treasure, his first piano concerto. At age thirty-four, he began work on the B-fat minor Concerto for Piano and Orchestra performed tonight. The music did not exactly flow from his pen: "I am engrossed in the composition of a piano concerto... but it is not coming easily... I have, as a duty, to force my brain to invent piano passages, with the result that my nerves are very strained."

The work did eventually come, but on Christmas Eve the next blow to Tchaikovsky's fragile psyche would be decisively delivered by the pianist Nikolay Rubinstein. Tchaikovsky played the concerto for his friend and mentor, and three years later, in a famous letter to his patron Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky describes the debacle:

"(after the performance) I stood up and asked, ‘Well?' Then a torrent poured from (his) mouth, gentle at first then more and more growing.... It turned out that my concerto was 'worthless and unplayable; passages so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written that they were beyond rescue; the work itself was bad, vulgar; in places I had stolen from other composers; only two or three pages were worth preserving; the rest must be thrown out or completely re-written'...a disinterested observer in the room might have thought I was a maniac, a talentless, senseless hack..."

Unusually undaunted, Tchaikovsky vowed to publish the work exactly as it was, which he did. Scratching Rubinstein's name from the dedication, Tchaikovsky brought the concerto to legendary German conductor/pianist Hans von Bülow, who found it to be "a pearl... so original in thought, so noble, so strong, so interesting in details." The piece has of course gone on to become one of the most famous, beloved, and enduring pieces of music ever written.

If Beethoven's Fifth Symphony contains the most famous opening of any work, this concerto is not far off: the strident horn calls, lush strings spinning the famous opening melody, the almost shocking chords spread over the entire keyboard – a bolder, more memorable opening statement has not been created. The musical gems continue in the middle section of the second movement with its waltz-like melody borrowed from the song Il faut s'amuer et rire. The fnal movement, sprinkled with Ukrainian folk-song tunes as in the first, gives the virtuoso pianist plenty to work with in a fast-moving, joyful and triumphant finale.

Ludwig van Beethoven
b. Bonn, Germany / baptized December 17, 1770; d. Vienna, Austria / March 26, 1827

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68, Pastoral

Quite different from the drama present in many of Beethoven's works, peace and serenity are the hallmarks of Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony No. 6. Rife with rich orchestration and feelings of elation, this work nearly corners the market on giddy euphoria. It is also the perfect example of the differing reactions that Beethoven's music provoked amongst his audiences, peers (if one can use such a word when referring to Beethoven) and critics.

Many hailed this symphony as yet another affirmation of Beethoven's great genius; while many early critics (and later ones) were confused by it. Those critics dismissed the symphony as being too long and repetitive; too simple, or too complicated. The fact is, though, that the very "repetitiveness" of the work is one of the keys to its brilliance. Repeated figures, brilliantly overlapped phrases, and long harmonic progressions create a breathless anticipation as the scenes of nature and wonder reveal themselves.

"Nature" truly is the dominant theme here, and what more wonderful muse could a composer have? The "nicknames" of the movements of the symphony (I. Awakening of Cheerful Feelings upon Arrival in the Country, II. Scene by the Brook, III. Merry Gathering of Country Folk, IV. Thunderstorm, V. Shepherd's Song: Happy and Thankful Feelings after the Storm) reveal the subject matter of the work. Beethoven loved the natural world (more than his fellow human beings!), and often wandered for hours at a time outdoors in all manner of weather. The meadows, woods, mountains and streams in the country outside of Vienna were his constant companions, and his most cherished muse.

In Beethoven's own words, "O God, what majesty is in woods like these... In the height there is peace – peace to serve Him." This explains much of Symphony No. 6 – its devotional character, its pure, unadulterated joy in describing the simplicity of nature's beauty. Yet the symphony does so much more than just describe in a narrative sense; another quote of Beethoven's reveals what this work actually is: "...more a matter of feeling than of painting in sounds."

Therein lies the genius of Beethoven: relation of the physical to the spiritual, in the same way that the symphony itself uses classical symphonic form and structure to communicate a Romantic feeling and series of impressions. So, it remains only for the listener to sit back and listen to this application of great genius revealing itself, as you are transported to a perfect natural world through perfectly constructed music.

Program Notes © 2011 Sophia Vincent

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