This Week's Music

I realize we could probably make a series out of the times I’ve started a series and then pivoted to another topic. But the annual New Year’s Day performance of Johann Strass’ Blue Danube waltz by the Vienna Philharmonic only happens once a year, so I believe I’m justified in today’s diversion.

To that end, our music for this week is the Blue Danube waltz by Johann Strauss, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic on January 1, 2020 under the direction of Maestro Andris Nelsons.

Every year, the Vienna Philharmonic gives a New Year’s Day concert that ends with the famous Blue Danube waltz. The concert has been taking place since 1939 and has featured some of the greatest conductors of all time: Ricardo Mutti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, and more. It will take place on January 1, 2023 at 11:15 am Eastern Time. Unfortunately it will not be live-streamed, but most classical music radio stations around the world broadcast the program live. The program will also include a number of other waltzes, selections from a ballet, and more.

The Blue Danube waltz hardly needs any introduction, other than to say that it is easily the most famous waltz of all time. You will hear the famous theme in the cellos and the horns.

Enjoy!

Hello all,

This week’s music marks the beginning of a new series on the string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich. We will be kicking off the series with the fourth movement of his String Quartet No. 1, performed by the Jerusalem Quartet (the fourth movement starts at the 10:41 mark in the video).

Before getting to the fourth movement, here’s a bit of background on Shostakovich as a chamber music composer:

• He did not begin writing chamber music until age 32, much later than most of his Russian colleagues. When he started composing the first string quartet, Shostakovich wrote, “I began to write it without special ideas and feelings. I wrote the first page as a sort of original exercise in the quartet form, but then work on the quartet captivated me and I finished it rather quickly.”
• Unlike his symphonies, Shostakovich intended his early string quartets to be light-hearted. In his own words: “Don’t expect to find special depth in this, my first quartet opus. In mood it is joyful, merry, lyrical. I would call it ‘spring-like.'” In keeping with the view in Moscow musical circles at the time, Shostakovich did not view chamber music as a series musical pursuit. Ironically, his string quartets have become some of the best-loved compositions of the twentieth century.
• The contentment, ease, and lightness you will hear in this string quartet are a sharp contrast to the turmoil in Shostakovich’s life at the time he wrote it. His Fourth Symphony had received a disastrous premiere in Moscow, and Shostakovich had given up hope that he would ever write a great symphony.

The fourth movement (starting at 10:41 in the video) returns to the home key of C Major. The end of the movement hangs the listener over a ledge of C Minor before resolving to the tonic. I chose this movement for the first installment in our series because it is a preview of some Shostakovich tendencies that you will become familiar with as we listen to his other string quartets. For instance, the fourth movement showcases the punchy metric effects Shostakovich would later perfect in his eighth string quartet. It also features shifting meters (later perfected by the American composer Aaron Copland) and classic “Shostakovich-style” harmonies that seem to be bitter, tart, and sweet at the same time.

Enjoy!

T

This week’s music is the Souvenir de Florence by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

This string sextet was composed during a time in Tchaikovsky’s life that was devoid of inspiration. Historians have found journal entries from this time in his life that evoke despair and depression. In several of them, Tchaikovsky doubts his ability to compose at all. It is therefore surprising that this cheerful and upbeat composition is the result of such a time in Tchaikovsky’s life.

The composition is structurally very easy to understand. As a rule of thumb, every theme is presented by a single instrument family. In other words, the exposition of a theme will begin in the two violins, progress to the two violas, and end in the two cellos. Although these voices will of course be independent of each other at times, they always resolve in their original pairs.

We are very fortunate to have some of Tchaikovsky’s letters to his colleagues about the piece. We know from these letters that the first movement needs to be played with “great fire and passion.” Similarly, we know that he wanted the slow second movement to reflect a summer thunderstorm with muted lightning in the distance. Tchaikovsky also ventured into relatively uncharted territory by incorporating a fugue format into the third movement. This is a structural and stylistic marker that was much more common 200 years before Tchaikovsky’s time. However, he bravely builds the entire third movement around a fugal system in which the pairs of instruments continuously add and subtract identical thematic material above and beneath each other.

Enjoy!

This week’s music is the “Ruler of the Spirits Overture” by Romantic-era composer Carl Maria von Weber.

Weber is not a composer we hear about very often, but he was an amazing person. He was a true Renaissance man, pursuing composing, conducting, writing, painting, and poetry. He is best known for his opera Der Freischutz, which is seen as one of the most important expressions of German musical heritage.

Weber was born into a musical family that traveled the European countryside as a performing troupe. He was appointed as a lead musician in the court of King Frederick I of Württemberg, but his carefree upbringing had instilled in him a restlessness and resistance to structure that quickly got him banished from that court. He resumed his gypsy lifestyle and rose to fame as a piano virtuoso before being appointed conductor of the opera in Prague in 1813. He seemed to have learned his lesson by this point, for he managed to hold this job for many successful years.

We can thank Weber for the opera genre, since before he came along, the opera was scorned in most European countries (aside from Italy, of course). Weber’s brave introduction of the opera format into German musical circles is one of the primary reasons we enjoy great operas today.

Enjoy!

T