by Will Hertz

Mozart was the greatest of concerto composers – he wrote 43 of them, covering every instrument in general use at the time except the cello and the trombone. In comparison, Beethoven wrote only seven concertos and Brahms only four, and those involved only the piano, violin and cello. Of particular importance were the 17 remarkable piano concertos that Mozart wrote during his ten years in Vienna to keep his name before the public.

Within a few months after settling in Vienna in 1781, Mozart had established himself as the best keyboard player in the city. The only challenge came from composer-pianist Muzio Clementi, with whom Mozart competed in an informal contest at the instigation of Emperor Joseph II. While Mozart was judged to have won and Clementi spoke generously of his playing, Mozart, with some ill grace, repeatedly disparaged the Italian pianist in his letters to the family in Salzburg. More importantly, the emperor was highly impressed with Mozart’s skill and continued to speak of the contest for more than a year.

In addition to composing the piano concertos, Mozart sponsored public concerts for their initial performance, thus becoming one of the first of Vienna’s musical entrepreneurs. For the concerts – known as "academies" – Mozart booked the hall, selected the program, hired the musicians, advertised the event, sold the tickets, offered for sale manuscript copies of the new music, and took the profit or loss. All in all, he sponsored 15 such concerts over a five-year period, the first composer to present so many public concerts in Vienna on his own. Further, he performed privately in aristocratic salons at least 18 times in 1784 and five times in 1785.

The first public concert in the series took place on March 3, 1782, possibly at the Burgtheater, the royal court theater still in existence. The emperor attended sitting in his royal box. The program included two piano concertos – the fifth, composed in 1773 but with a new finale, and the concerto we hear this evening composed specifically for that initial concert. Since Mozart was trying to introduce himself as an opera composer, there were also excerpts from Lucio Silla and Idomeneo, and to please the audience an improvised fantasy by the composer.

The new concerto was the third of three – now identified as K. 413, 414 and 415 – that Mozart composed in 1782 and 1783 and then published as a group. In them Mozart strived to achieve a balance between sophisticated composition and public appeal, describing the concertos in a letter to his father as follows:

"These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why."

 

You may be surprised in this evening’s performance of Mozart’s K. 415 to see and hear no wind instruments. Yes, Mozart scored the concerto for two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets and timpani in addition to the usual strings. However, in announcing the three new concertos in the Wiener Zeitung, he stated that the accompanying instruments could be a string quartet. This evening we hear the latter version, plus a double bass doubling the cello an octave lower to reinforce the bass line. According to Laurie Kennedy, the string writing in

K. 415 is unusually rich and striking when not covered by the winds or timpani.

All 17 of Mozart’s Vienna concertos follow the same format, and are in essence dramas in the concert hall, the protagonists being the soloist – Mozart himself – and the other instruments. Thus, in a typical first movement, we hear first the other instruments setting the stage, then the piano taking over, and then a series of dramatic gives-and-takes between these two entities. All this occurs within the conventional pattern of sonata form – the statement, development and restatement of thematic material.

The second and third movements generally tend to be less imposing than the first movements and more diverse in structure. They are characterized, however, by the same dramatic dialogue between the other instruments and the piano.

Within this standardized structure and style, Mozart achieved a remarkable degree of diversity. Thus, the distinctive character of this evening’s concerto is set by the choice of key – C major. In general, Mozart reserved this key for music of a ceremonial, even pompous character, marked by brisk, military rhythms and brilliant passage work. He was to repeat this tonality and character in two later concertos (Nos. 21 and 25) and two symphonies (Nos. 34 and the "Jupiter").

In this concerto Mozart, here and there, departs from the pattern described above. Thus, the first movement features a mixed bag of thematic ideas. The opening section for the other instruments contains a surprising amount of music that never returns, and after a pause the soloist introduces new material and repeats the first theme for only a few measures. The development, moreover, is concerned largely with the new material although there is a short and effective passage built on the first theme. Again, the pianist opens the recapitulation with its original entry material, and the cadenza, written out by Mozart, contains no reference to the first theme.

For the second movement, Mozart originally intended a serious adagio in C minor, but then abandoned the idea for a quietly flowing andante in F major in simple ABA form. The main theme is ornamented differently each time it reappears. Also listen closely to the other instruments, particularly the interweaving of the second violins and violas at the movement’s opening and the high Gs played by the first violins to start the middle section.

The concluding rondo is the most haunting movement. The piano announces the main theme, in 6/8 rhythm; this is repeated by the other instruments, which follow with an attractive five-measure phrase. The tempo changes to 2/4, and the piano presents a melancholy aria in C minor – based on the serious material discarded for the second movement – against a moving background. All of this material is restated in different dress, and the concerto ends on the opening rhythm with the music fading away against murmuring strings and finally a pianissimo drum-roll. There is nothing like it in any other Mozart finale.

In the second half of the 19^th century, two schools of composition emerged in Russia. One group, known as "The Five," consisted of Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky Korsakov. It was nationalist in outlook, deriving much of its inspiration from Russian folk elements, history and literature. The other group, led by Anton Rubinstein and exemplified by Tchaikovsky, was more cosmopolitan, seeking to temper Russian cultural influences with musical ideas from elsewhere in Europe.

Arensky started out in the former group as a student of Rimsky at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, but on graduation he joined the faculty of the Moscow Conservatory where Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein were older and influential colleagues. Then, while still in Moscow, he became conductor of the Russian Choral Society and a member of the council of the Synodal School of Church Music, renewing his interest in Russian musical tradition. Finally, in 1894 he was named director of the Imperial chapel back in St. Petersburg, retiring in 1900 on a generous pension to compose full time. Addicted to drinking and gambling, he died at the age of 45 from tuberculosis.

Reflecting these life experiences, Arensky had a foot in both schools of composition. On the one hand, he wrote three operas and a number of songs and choral works in the nationalist mold, making considerable use of folk melodies and idioms. On the other hand, he modeled his instrumental music after that of Tchaikovsky, using the conventional musical forms developed by Haydn and Mozart in western Europe.

This three-movement quartet, written in 1894 after the move back to St. Petersburg, merged both orientations. On the one hand, Arensky dedicated the work to the memory of Tchaikovsky, his mentor and friend, and incorporated in the first and last movements Russian orthodox funeral chants. On the other hand, he cast the first movement in conventional sonata form, using such a chant as the main theme and retaining its somber, funereal character in the development.

You may recognize the theme of the second movement – Tchaikovsky’s "A Legend", one of his Sixteen Children’s Songs, Op. 54. Also known as "When Jesus Christ Was But a Child," the song tells the story of the boy Jesus planting a tree in his garden; the tree eventually furnishes the thorns with which Jesus is crowned at his crucifixion. The song became so popular that Tchaikovsky made arrangements of it for orchestra and a capella chorus.

In Arensky’s treatment, the song is heard immediately followed by seven variations, some moving and some witty. In the last variation, the theme is heard backwards – Arensky said this was in imitation of the practice in military funerals of holding rifles upside down. Arensky’s variations proved so attractive in their own right that he arranged the movement for string orchestra, and it now might be more frequently performed in that format than in the original.

In the last movement, the Arensky follows up the opening theme from a Russian funeral mass with the well-known theme of the celebratory folk song Slava! ("Glory") associated with the coronation of the Tsar. This theme was also used by Mussorgsky in the opera Boris Godunov and by Beethoven in his second "Rasumovsky" Quartet.

The most unusual aspect of the quartet is its unusual instrumentation – two cellos and only one violin. The deep and dark sonority provided by two low-register instruments apparently seemed appropriate for an "in Memoriam" work and for the use of Russian liturgical chants. To enhance the work’s commercial appeal, however, Arensky later arranged it for the standard string quartet, and today either version may be encountered in the concert hall.

Like the string quartet, the string sextet – two violins, two violas and two cellos – grew out of the 18th century divertimento, an informal piece designed for lighter entertainment. The early divertimentos were composed for a variety of small instrumental ensembles, using whatever instruments the composers had available. In the 1760s and 1770s, Haydn developed the grouping of two violins, viola and cello into the string quartet. In 1776, Boccherini did the same for the string sextet, composing six works for that instrumental combination.

Mozart and Beethoven followed Haydn’s model with the string quartet, and their lead was followed by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. Paralleling the four conventional groupings of the human voice – sopranos, altos, tenors and basses – the quartet seemed the most appropriate chamber-music medium for the development of musical ideas. The string sextet, in contrast, languished, presumably because composers considered six string parts unduly burdensome or the resulting texture muddy.

It took Johannes Brahms to salvage the string-sextet idea and forge it into two masterpieces – his Op. 18, completed in 1860, and his Op. 36, completed in 1865. It is not recorded why Brahms was attracted to the string sextet, a teasing mystery since he had already made several attempts at the string quartet but had scrapped them. The most plausible explanation is that the incentive was provided by a sextet by Louis Spohr, which was published in 1850 and warmly received by Brahms’s friend Robert Schumann.

Even after Brahms’s examples, the string sextet never really caught on, although other composers -- Dvo_ák, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Borodin, Reger, Martin_ and Schoenberg -- were sufficiently attracted to write one string sextet each. Brahms himself switched back to the string quartet and then the string quintet.

When Brahms composed the Op.18 sextet, he was still a struggling young composer. In fact, to make ends meet, he had spent the three fall months of 1857, 1858, and 1859 in the court at Detmold, a sleepy little principality in the Teutoburger forest some 100 miles from his home in Hamburg. Here he conducted a choral society, played at court concerts and taught piano to Princess Frederike and her friends. While the fee was modest, he had plenty of time to compose and to indulge his love for walking in the countryside.

Further, the restful environment at Detmold gave Brahms the opportunity he needed to recover from the emotional pressures of the preceding three years. In February, 1854, Schumann, his friend and mentor, had attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine and had voluntarily entered an asylum. Brahms had immediately joined Schumann’s wife Clara in Düsseldorf to take charge of her household and to look after her children, while Clara, a concert pianist, went on concert tours to support her family.

Young and inexperienced, Brahms declared his love for Clara, and to some degree the lonely Clara, 14 years his senior, reciprocated. However, after Schumann died in July, 1856, opening the door to marriage, their ardor cooled, perhaps because of Brahms’s inhibitions – he never did marry – or perhaps because of Clara’s sensitivity about their age difference. They remained intimate, life-long friends – how intimate we will never know.

Understandably, Brahms found these years emotionally draining, later terming them his Wertherzeit or "Werther period," a reference to the title character of a Goethe novel, an artistically inclined young man who is rejected in love. The little court and surrounding forest of Detmold provided the perfect antidote.

While Detmold was hardly a stimulating musical environment, the 18th century atmosphere of the court inspired him to write his two orchestral serenades. Further, Brahms returned to chamber music, working on what would eventually become his two piano quartets, Op. 25 and 26; his piano quintet, Op. 34, and his two string sextets. Brahms often worked on several manuscripts at one time and took years to complete any one, and the Op.18 sextet was the first of these Detmold projects to reach fruition.

The sextet opens with a demonstration of the enriched sonority made possible by six instruments. At first we hear only three instruments – the first cello playing the warm melody in its upper register, the second cello providing the base, and the first viola offering an accompanying figure in between. This sound is obviously impossible with a string quartet. In the ninth measure, the first violin picks up the theme, and the second violin is added. The second viola joins in the 23rd measure, but the full sonority of the group is not reached until the 35th.

In his early chamber works, Brahms was characteristically generous with his themes, and the sextet is no exception. The second theme, waltz-like, is marked by unstable tonality, a device favored by Schubert. The first cello presents the more expressive third theme, and still another theme is offered by the two violins and first viola to round off the exposition.

The second movement is a theme with six variations. The theme, in the minor mode, reflects Brahms’s affection for Hungarian Gypsy music, with one biographer hearing an imitation of the cembalom – a Hungarian zither – in the accompanying figure in the lower strings. The first three variations give the impression of increasing speed through the use of figurations of 16ths, 16th triplets and 32nd notes, the last being a particular challenge to the cellists. The fourth variation shifts to the major and provides a tranquil contrast. The fifth variation, suddenly piano, is seasoned by a bagpipe drone in the second viola, and the sixth variation returns to the minor with the first cello restating the theme.

Clara Schumann was particularly fond of this movement, and on her 41st birthday in September, 1860, Brahms presented her with a piano transcription of it. Brahms often played the transcription in public; it was published in 1927, and there are now several recordings of it.

The scherzo is short, with a sprightly staccato theme. The animated trio is supported by the opening figure of the main section, and it returns for the coda.

As in the first movement, Brahms opens the finale with a gradual introduction of the instruments. The first cello presents the graceful theme accompanied only by the second viola and second cello. The two violins and first viola then pick up the discourse. The lower instruments return, and the full group is not heard until the 41st measure. The rest of the movement is marked by frequent contrasts between the two groups.

In the coda, we hear still another coloration. The first viola plays the main theme in 16th note arpeggios against a pizzicato accompaniment in the other five instruments. Before the end, however, everyone is using his or her bow.

© 2006 by Willard J. Hertz