Among the many frustrations in Schubert’s tragically short career, none came close to the difficulties he encountered in the world of theater music, with sixteen failed operas in as many years. He had a habit of working with subpar librettos written by his friends; some scores he wisely abandoned midway, and others he brought to fruition only to see them fizzle. A last-minute invitation in 1823 to compose incidental music for the play Rosamunde might have helped opened doors for Schubert in Vienna’s theatrical circle, but the drama by Helmina von Chézy was a flop. The play closed, and Schubert’s music was lost for decades.

Schubert assembled nearly an hour of music for Rosamunde in a matter of weeks, pulling in some movements from existing works. When the incidental music failed, Schubert was at least able to reuse some of the new themes, as in the melody from Entr’acte III, which turned up in the String Quartet in A minor (D. 804), and in a Piano Impromptu in B-flat. This gentle Andantino movement is a perennial favorite among the suite of incidental music, with its elegant string theme in the outer sections and a contrasting episode featuring tuneful woodwind solos. The Ballet Music II features dance accompaniment in a marching gait that tumbles into a lively triplet pulse for a contrasting passage.

Aaron Grad ©2013

“The opening of the second movement is one of the greatest melodies ever written for violin. In the wrong hands, it can become overly sentimental, something which Prokofiev warned violinists to avoid. The combination of vulnerability and tenderness that comes across in Patricia’s recording of the piece was one of the first things that drew me into her artistry.” – Kyu-Young Kim, SPCO Artistic Director and Principal Violin

After the October Revolution in 1917, Prokofiev followed the lead of many Russian artists who emigrated to the West—except that he traveled east, reaching New York by way of Siberia, Tokyo and San Francisco. His dim American prospects eventually led him to continue on to Paris, but once there he butted up against Stravinsky and the young French cohort known as “Les Six,” who set the tone for the Parisian avant-garde with their cool detachment and spiky irreverence.

Prokofiev went through his own enfant terrible phase, but he matured into an increasingly direct and heartfelt manner of composing that he described as “new simplicity,” a style that pushed him ever further into the margins of European art music. Ultimately he found a receptive audience back where he started, in the Soviet Union: He returned for his first concert tour in 1927, and he settled there permanently in 1936, making him the only major Russian artist to repatriate after the Revolution.

The Violin Concerto No. 2, from 1935, turned out to be Prokofiev’s final commission outside of the Soviet Union. Supporters of the French violinist Robert Soetans funded the work, which Prokofiev composed in Paris and during travels through the Soviet Union.

A “NEW SIMPLICITY”
The concerto fulfills the promise of a “new simplicity” from its opening measures, entrusting an unadorned theme to the solo violin. That melody haunts the Allegro moderato movement, ultimately silencing a contrasting lyrical strain and returning for a charged final statement with bellicose plucks.

The slow movement takes up the same ascending triad pattern that began the first movement, transporting it to a peaceful accompanying texture for clarinets and pizzicato strings. The solo violin floats above with a melody of timeless beauty and grace, soaring into the instrument’s highest range as the melody passes to the orchestra. A central Allegretto section provides an energized contrast, making the sweet tune’s return all the more affecting.

With its lumbering dance theme and Spanish-tinged castanets, the finale confirms that Prokofiev’s move toward simplification did not excise his wry wit. The music builds to a propulsive coda, the violin’s perpetual motion figures urged forward by a thudding bass drum and throbbing accompaniment.

Aaron Grad ©2016

Upon finishing the Seventh Symphony in the spring of 1812, Ludwig van Beethoven began immediately on his Eighth. He worked on it through a summer retreat in the spa town of Teplitz, where he wrote (but never sent) a heartbreaking love letter to his “Immortal Beloved,” who may have been Antonie Brentano, a married woman from Frankfurt. With the Napoleonic Wars disrupting concert life in Vienna, the Seventh Symphony did not reach the public until the end of 1813, and the Eighth was delayed until February of 1814, in a performance that Beethoven conducted, despite his near-total deafness.

The Eighth Symphony, in its length and instrumentation, is a throwback to Franz Joseph Haydn’s “London” Symphonies from the 1790s. Still, Beethoven’s efficiency should not be confused with complacency; this was a period in which the central thrust of his music was the distillation of each gesture down to its essence, whether it was the imposing “fate” motive of the Fifth Symphony or the jolly intervals and fragments that underpin the Eighth.

The opening passage of the Eighth Symphony is a study in balance: downward motion answered by upward; loud followed by soft. Having offered a full glimpse of the primary theme, Beethoven immediately deconstructs it into its essential, leaping gesture. The leaps segue into the secondary theme (in the “wrong” key, incidentally), and this motive gets hung up too and starts leaping again. Eventually the whole orchestra piles on with jumps up and down in octaves, a gesture that carries forward into the development section.

The second movement, marked Allegretto scherzando, is as close as this symphony gets to a slow movement. Here the object of obsession is a brisk, three-note pattern: short-short-long, usually cast as a leap up and a step down into a target note. The strings juggle this motive like a hot potato under the watchful eyes of clucking woodwinds. Three notes at times reduce down to two, and finally it ends with a shudder on a single pitch.

Having dispensed with the joking in the second movement, the third movement takes the form of a graceful minuet, rather than a more rambunctious scherzo. The warm, slurred string lines offset the dryness of the preceding music, and the contrasting trio section evokes a pastoral air with horn calls and clarinet counter-lines.

The finale flies by at a whirlwind Allegro vivace tempo, which Beethoven specified as 84 measures per minute. (When the violins enter with tremolo figures, each note lasts not quite six-hundredths of a second!) Besides the obvious excitement of such fast music, it invites the ear to draw out larger patterns from within motion that is too quick to process on a note-by-note basis, forming another strategy to crystallize the essence of musical material.

Aaron Grad ©2023