Beethoven's 2nd Symphony
February 12, 2011, 7:30 p.m.
Coronado Theatre

PROGRAM NOTES
By Steven Ledbetter

SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Classical Symphony, opus 25
Sergei Sergeyevitch Prokofiev was born in Sontzovka, near Ekaterinoslav in the Ukraine, on  April 23, 1891, and died in Moscow on March 5, 1953. The Classical Symphony, was written in 1916‑17. The composer himself conducted the first performance in Petrograd on April 21, 1918; he also led the Russian Symphony Orchestra in the American premiere, which took place in New York in December of the same year. The score calls for a “classical” orchestra—two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, plus timpani and strings. Duration is about 15 minutes.

This symphony is officially the Symphony No. 1 in D major of Sergei Prokofiev, but the nickname "Classical" has taken hold so thoroughly that it is virtually never identified in the more formal way. The precocious young musician had entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory at the age of thirteen, and made his best marks as a pianist, but his interest in composing grew ever stronger. Following youthful efforts at symphony writing both before and during his conservatory years, Prokofiev wrote his first symphony using the symphonic model of Haydn. He had developed a taste for the classical style in the conducting class of Nikolai Tcherepnin, and he turned this to good effect in his new piece.

The actual impetus to write the Classical Symphony came from Prokofiev's desire to compose an entire symphony without the use of a piano, which had been his constant aid in composition from his childhood improvisations to that time. It occurred to him that it might be easier to employ Haydn's style in that undertaking. And another thought intrigued him: if Haydn were alive at the time of his new composition, how would he blend his own musical style with the newer elements music? Prokofiev decided to answer the question for him.

He began the symphony in the summer of 1916 with the Gavotte (the third movement) and wrote material for the other movements too. The following summer, near Petrograd, he discarded the original finale entirely and rewrote it, while polishing the rest of the work. “And when it began to hang together, I renamed it the Classical Symphony. First, because that was simpler. Second, out of mischief...and in the secret hope that in the end I would be the winner if the symphony really did prove to be a classic.” And so it has proved: no symphonic work of Prokofiev's is performed more frequently or received with greater delight.

The opening downbow of the strings and the arpeggiation of the D major triad take us back immediately to the world of the Viennese classics, as does the size of the orchestra and the way the various instruments are handled. Prokofiev’s sudden shift to C major only eleven measures into the piece tells us that the classical air is not simple imitation or pastiche, but a reworking of traditional musical gestures with witty, modern twists. The Larghetto unfolds a simple rondo form, equally clear in its returns to the descending lyrical theme in the violins. The Gavotte is pure Prokofiev in its blend of innocent dance with delightful, unexpected twists of harmony. (He returned to this dance many years later and expanded it for use in his ballet score for Romeo and Juliet.) The brilliant rushing finale, Molto vivace, maintains its high spirits without let‑up from beginning to end, partly because Prokofiev tried, in writing this movement, to use nothing but major chords. This plan demands some lightning changes of key that would have surprised old Haydn, but they would no doubt have delighted him, too.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Concerto for bassoon and orchestra in B-flat, K.191 (186e)
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. He completed the Bassoon Concerto in Salzburg on June 4, 1774. In addition to the solo part, the score calls for two oboes, two horns, and strings. Duration is about 20 minutes.

We have only one bassoon concerto by Mozart, though he is reported to have written three for Baron von Dürnitz, one in C and two in B-flat—and the one that we have does not seem to be one of those three. (Mozart did not meet the Baron until December 1774, and he completed this concerto the previous June 4.) Moreover we have only the incipit (the first few notes of the theme, entered in a catalogue) for a fifth bassoon concerto, in F. Thus, it seems, 80% of his output of bassoon concerti is lost!

All of the concerti were evidently rather early works. Certainly the one surviving concerto falls into that category, having been written when Mozart was only eighteen. He already had a good deal of experience with the instrument through writing divertimenti, and his sense of its expressive capabilities—its particular timbre—served him in good stead.

The opening movement is straightforward in its layout of the two principal themes—the first a traditional fanfare announcement, the second gentler in character. But he finds imaginative ways to vary the treatment: we first hear the second subject in the orchestra alone, before the soloist’s entry. That material returns as part of the soloist’s own exposition; here Mozart gives the bassoon a new countermelody over the theme. When the same passage comes back in the recapitulation, at the end of the movement, bassoon and orchestral violins trade parts.

The slow movement, with muted strings, is a dreamy arioso, richly elaborate in an almost vocal way. Mozart lovers today are inclined to hear the Countess’s aria “Porgi Amor” in the opening of the melody, but Mozart did not write The Marriage of Figaro for another dozen years, so he was certainly not thinking of that unhappy woman as he wrote this expressive music.

The finale is a rondo cast as an extended minuet. Though this simple arrangement may not approach the brilliantly inventive structures of his later concerto finales, Mozart finds plenty of ways to provide a delicious, playful variety of phrasing for both soloist and orchestra.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 2 in D, opus 36
Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized in Bonn, Germany on December 17, 1770, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. The Second Symphony was composed during the summer and fall of 1802; its first performance took place on an all‑Beethoven concert given at the Theater‑an‑der‑Wien in Vienna on April 5, 1803 (the program also included the First Symphony, as well as the premieres of the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the oratorio “Christ on the Mount of Olives”). The symphony is scored for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets in pairs, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 32 minutes.

During the summer of 1802, Beethoven left Vienna for several months to live in the nearby suburb of Heiligenstadt, located in the low mountains to the northwest of the city. Heiligenstadt would be but one in a lengthy list of temporary residences of the peripatetic Beethoven, were it not for one incident that took place there not long before he returned to Vienna.

Having gone to Heiligenstadt in the first place on the advice of his doctor, who suggested that the rural quiet of the village might improve his hearing, which had already begun to concern him deeply, Beethoven fell into a deep, suicidal despair and on October 6, 1802, gave vent to his emotions by writing—in a document now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament—a lengthy farewell that combined elements of self-justification (trying to explain his apparently misanthropic nature) with rhetorical moralisms on the importance of virtue (which, he says, prevented him from taking his own life) and passionate outbursts expressing his unhappiness. After writing this document, Beethoven sealed it up in his papers, where it was discovered after his death, a full quarter of a century later, and went on with the business of living and composing.

In any case, the musical works sketched and completed at Heiligenstadt that summer—including the opus 30 violin sonatas, the opus 31 piano sonatas, and the Second Symphony—seem entirely to have avoided contamination from the cerebral world of the Heiligenstadt Testament. The symphony, while vigorous and energetic in the unmistakable early style of Beethoven, is nonetheless smiling throughout, filled with such musical wit as befits a composer who once studied, however briefly, with Haydn. At the same time, the Second Symphony is a step forward on the path of “The Nine,” conquering wider territory than the First.

Following the slow introduction (which is already three times the length of that for the First Symphony), Beethoven presents thematic material that is little more than an arpeggiation of the tonic chord, animated by a rapid turn figure in the tune itself and an answering “fiery flash of the fiddles,” as described in the Grove Dictionary. At the very outset of the Allegro, everything sounds straightforwardly formalistic, but the dovetailing of phrases soon keeps one from predicting the next event. When the full orchestra takes up the theme, what begins as a simple D major arpeggio climbs to a strongly accented C-natural, the first emphatic out‑of‑key note; it has consequences later on. The violins begin inserting a measured trill, which appears in every movement as a particular fingerprint of this symphony. The second theme is also straightforwardly simple, a marchlike arpeggiation of the dominant key presented first on clarinets and bassoons. At the end of the recapitulation all is prepared for a short coda, with a few perfunctory reiterations of the tonic D major triad, when the woodwinds suddenly insist on inserting a C-natural—the intrusive note from early in the movement—into the tonic chord. This generates a much more extended coda, which takes on some of the elements of a new development section, which would be even more marked in the Third Symphony to come.

The slow movement is one of the most leisurely Beethoven ever wrote (“indolent” is the word that most analysts have used to describe it). It is a full‑scale slow‑movement sonata form, complete with development and a good deal of internal repetition. But for all its length, the Larghetto never loses momentum, and it remains deliciously pastoral throughout, with just momentary twinges of pain.
 Beethoven uses the term “scherzo” here for the first time in a symphony; the corresponding movement of the First Symphony had been called a “menuetto,” though it had passed far beyond the graceful character of that courtly dance. The third movement of the Second Symphony, though, is a hearty joke (which is what the word “scherzo” means), with whirlwind alternations of dialogue, tossing back and forth the basic three‑note motive between the instruments, then suddenly bending one pitch to lead off to distant keys, only to return home with equal celerity. In the Trio, the strings roar in mock gruffness on the chord of F‑sharp major, only to be reminded (by a fortissimo A from the woodwinds) that F‑sharp is not the home key here, but simply the third of D, to which the chastened strings immediately return.

The finale is a wonderfully confident achievement, fusing Haydn’s wit with Beethoven’s newly won breadth and grandeur. The rondo style of the principal theme—a pick‑up tossed off in the upper instruments to be answered with a sullen growl lower down—forecasts wit, especially when Beethoven uses that little pick‑up to mislead the ear. But the real breadth appears at the end, when a quiet, lyrical idea that has passed almost unnoticed as the transition between first and second themes now takes on an unexpectedly potent force and generates an enormous coda with a whole new development section, in which the measured tremolo of the strings, heard here and there throughout the symphony, returns with a fortissimo on the same C‑natural that had upset the course of the home tonic back in the first movement. From here on, the reaffirmation of that firm tonic is the main order of business, to bring the chain of events to a close.

The size of the last movement and the extended coda clearly unsettled the critic for the Zeitung für die elegante Welt (“Newspaper for the elegant world”), who wrote after the first performance: “Beethoven’s Second Symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.” One wonders what he thought of Beethoven’s ensuing works.

Basil Lam has noted acutely, apropos of this symphony, “In view of such music as this, let us not lapse into the still received opinion that Beethoven, after writing two promising symphonies, began to brood on Napoleon and found himself great with the Eroica.” Beethoven’s sense of proportion—which allows him to achieve the greatest effects with the simplest and most abstract materials—is already fully in operation with the Second Symphony. While the ways of genius are wondrously strange and no one lacking the advantage of hindsight could predict the extraordinary growth that was to come in the Third Symphony, it would not only be unfair to characterize Beethoven’s Second as simply an “early work,” or as “complacently formal,” it would be downright foolish.

© Steven Ledbetter  (www.stevenledbetter.com)