Program Notes
then repeated by the orchestra. The movement’s second
section, also in A major, is begun by a falling phrase from
the piano. These pages are stirred ever so slightly as they
progress by some expressive harmonies before the opening
music returns. The finale is a vivacious rondo built on a folkinspired
theme that looks forward to Papageno’s infectious
music in The Magic Flute.
JÖRG WIDMANN
CON BRIO
Duration: ca. 12 minutes
Overview
German composer and clarinetist Jörg Widmann was born
in Munich in 1973 and studied clarinet with Gerd Starke
at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich and with Charles
Neidich at the Juilliard School in New York. After winning
the Carl Maria von Weber Competition, Competition of
German Music Colleges and Bavarian State Prize for Young
Artists, Widmann was appointed professor of clarinet at
the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg in 2001; he
continues to be recognized as one of his generation’s finest
clarinetists. His parallel interest in composition began when
he started lessons with Kay Westermann in Munich at age
eleven, and continued with his studies with Hans Werner
Henze, Wilfried Hiller and Wolfgang Rihm; in 2009, he was
also named to the Freiburg Hochschule’s composition
faculty.
What To Listen For
For a cycle of the complete Beethoven symphonies
with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2008-
2009, the ensemble’s Chief Conductor, Mariss Jansons,
commissioned six internationally recognized composers
to write “reflections” that would “last approximately ten
minutes and refer to a particular symphony by Ludwig van
Beethoven in terms of its form, its concept or the material
used.” Widmann, who took the inspiration for his Con Brio
(“With Energy,” a favorite tempo marking of Beethoven)
from the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, wrote, “I
delight in working with music history in order to turn it
into something new.… My reference to Beethoven in Con
Brio begins with the scoring, because in the Symphonies
No. 7 and No. 8 the orchestration is special. There are not
four horns or three trombones, as in the Ninth Symphony,
but just two horns, two trumpets and timpani, with which
he makes that incredible ‘noise.’ In my view, the reduced
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scoring is the very reason he unleashes such musical fury
in the first place.” Though Widmann did not quote directly
from the symphonies, their sonorities, figurations, rhythms
and buoyancy echo throughout Con Brio, a testament to
the powerful influence that Beethoven continues to exert
almost two centuries after his death.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN C MAJOR, OP. 21
Duration: ca. 26 minutes
Overview
Beethoven’s music of the 1790s, after he had settled
permanently in Vienna, showed an increasingly powerful
expression that mirrored the maturing of his genius. The
First Symphony, though, is a conservative, even a cautious
work. In it, he was more interested in exploring the
architectural than the emotional components of the form,
and relied on the musical language established by Haydn
and Mozart in composing it. In its reliance on a thoroughly
logical, carefully conceived structure, the First Symphony
also set the formal precedent for his later music: though
Beethoven dealt with vivid emotional states, the technique
of his music was never founded upon any other than the
most solid intellectual base.
What To Listen For
The First Symphony opens, unusually, with a dissonance, a
harmony that seems to lead away from the main tonality,
which is normally established immediately at the outset
of a Classical work. The sonata form proper begins with
a quickening of the tempo and the presentation of the
main theme by the strings; the second theme follows a
brief silence. The development deals exclusively with
the main theme. The sonata-form Andante has a canonic
main theme and an airy second subject. Though the third
movement is labeled “Menuetto,” it is really one of those
whirlwind packets of rhythmic energy that, beginning with
the Second Symphony, Beethoven labeled “scherzo.” The
finale begins with a short introduction comprising halting
scale fragments that preview the vivacious main theme. The
Symphony ends with ribbons of scales rising through the
orchestra and emphatic cadential gestures.
© 2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
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