(Duration: 12 min)

After studying violin in his hometown of Brisbane, Australia, Brett Dean earned a position in the viola section of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1985. To contribute to the repertoire of the Scharoun Ensemble, an octet he participated in with fellow Berlin Philharmonic members, Dean started arranging existing music. Arranging soon led to composing original works, and the self-taught Dean rose to become a leader in his adopted field. He wrote the following note about Short Stories, premiered in 2005 by the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Just as I love reading short stories, the best of which reveal so much of life in just a few pages, so too have I always had a special admiration for music’s miniaturists, especially the aphoristic works of Webern, Satie and Kurtág, in the way they can convey a profound sense of knowledge and understanding in a brief utterance. It is one of the greatest challenges for a composer to reduce the workings of a piece of music to its barest essentials and yet get a message across.

Only one movement of this cycle sets out to describe a specific story, that of the death of Soviet Cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, who died upon re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere in his Soyuz I spacecraft in 1967, thereby becoming the first person to die in space, an early casualty of the political pressures of the international space race of the 1960s. The sonic inspiration for this, the fourth interlude, came initially from the eerie loneliness found in recordings of space telemetry signals, but chancing upon a vivid archival recording of Komarov’s final frantic discussions with the control center about the fate of his mission further informed the dramatic urgency of the work.

The other interludes tell abstract stories, open to personal interpretation and without a specific narrative. The opening Devotional establishes a sense of prayer or private ritual, a delicate hymn-like chorale set against a restless background of scurrying solo viola and glassy violin pizzicato. Dark and disturbed visions or dreams inhabit the world of Premonitions, the second interlude, with its atmosphere of arrest and unease. Embers, the central interlude, conjures up a scene of staring into a dying fire as it gives off its final sparks in a slow, dreamy movement that explores string colors and sonorities, while the closing Arietta presents us with a somewhat disembodied song of “near-resolve.” Led by a solo violin line, other solo voices add momentary comment to this emotionally ambiguous slow movement, a short homage to the string quartets of Webern which so tellingly present such an array of expressive possibilities in a very confined space.

Aaron Grad ©2024

(Duration: 28 min)

Nestled in the Bavarian Alps in southern Germany, the small town of Garmisch provided Richard Strauss a refuge from the chaos of World War II. He cloistered his Jewish daughter-in-law and grandsons there, and stayed after Allied forces occupied the area in April of 1945. The aging composer had long been famous in the United States (his immortal tone poems were nearly 50 years old by that point), and musicians within the ranks of the army ensured Strauss’ protection. One G.I. who approached Strauss with awe was a 24-year-old intelligence officer, John de Lancie, who in his civilian life had played Strauss’ music as the solo oboist for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Over a series of dinners in the summer of 1945, de Lancie had the opportunity to compliment the composer on his oboe writing and asked if he had ever considered writing a concerto. Strauss’s answer was simply, “No.”

Sergeant de Lancie was understandably surprised when he received a clipping a few months later with news of Strauss’ latest composition, an oboe concerto. Evidently fuzzy on the origins of his guest, Strauss had inscribed on the title page, “Oboe Concerto 1945 / Inspired by an American soldier / (oboist from Chicago).” Strauss later tried to arrange for de Lancie to give the American premiere, but a question of orchestral seniority interfered, since de Lancie had since joined the Philadelphia Orchestra as Associate First Oboist, and the concerto privileges were reserved for the principal player.

Thanks to the influence of his father, a famous horn player with conservative tastes, Strauss had always been devoted to the time-honored ideals of Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. That Classical streak never left Strauss even through the years when he was composing the most progressive tone poems and operas in the world, and by the end of his long career, Strauss was still under the sway of the old Viennese masters, as can be heard in the taut structures and crystalline textures of the Oboe Concerto.

The cellos begin the first movement with a little figure that wobbles between two adjacent scale tones, and, in true Beethoven fashion, those four notes become essential building blocks, undergirding the florid melodies of the first movement and continuing as a unifying gesture in the second movement, a Mozartean Andante. In the lively finale, vigorous counterpoint and swirling harmonies deliver the oboe into a traditional cadenza. The exit from the cadenza is where things go off script when Strauss introduces a new Allegro tempo and additional themes that keep the fun going for a few extra minutes.

Aaron Grad ©2024

(Duration: 25 min)

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began writing symphonies, he was an eight-year-old keyboard prodigy in London, where he had played for King George III and befriended Johann Christian Bach — the youngest son of Johann Sebastian Bach, and a trendsetter in the emerging genre of the symphony. As a teenager back in his hometown of Salzburg, Mozart looked to the example of Franz Joseph Haydn, whose brother happened to work alongside Mozart and his father, and some of the symphonies Mozart wrote as a seventeen- and eighteen-year-old ranked among his first truly brilliant compositions. By that time he had already completed three-fourths of his lifetime symphonic output.

Mozart had fewer occasions to write symphonies during his heyday as a busy freelancer in Vienna. He might never have written his three final symphonies were it not for the money troubles that plagued his final years, a period when demand for his performances had dried up. Some opportunity must have sparked this symphonic trilogy, but most likely nothing came of it. Mozart may not even have heard all three before he died.

Symphony No. 39 (the first of the final trilogy) is Mozart’s only mature symphony without oboes, instead featuring clarinets. It is also one of his few symphonies to begin with a slow introduction, a structure favored by Haydn. The mellow key of E-flat and a rolling three-beat tempo reinforce the gentle character of the fast body of the opening movement.

The Andante con moto second movement preserves the docile atmosphere. Strings introduce the innocent theme alone at first, but individual woodwinds later emerge for some of the movement’s most personal passages, their echoing lines interweaving with chamber-music delicacy.

Interrupting the noble and sturdy Menuetto, whimsical clarinet counterpoint in the contrasting trio section parodies the ländler, an Austrian folk dance. In the finale, the main theme separates into malleable scale fragments and leaps, foreshadowing Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphonies with their relentless manipulations of small motives.

Aaron Grad ©2024