Thursday, April 30, 8pm | THE ELIZABETH TAYLOR FESSENDEN MEMORIAL CONCERT
Friday, May 1, 1:30pm | THE PETER AND ANNE BROOKE CONCERT
Saturday, May 2, 8pm | THE RUTH CLAYTON SARIS CONCERT
BERNARD HAITINK
conducting
SCHUMANN
OVERTURE FROM MUSIC FOR BYRON’S
“MANFRED,” OPUS 115
MOZART
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 23 IN A, K.488
Allegro
Adagio
Allegro assai
MARIA JOÃO PIRES
{INTERMISSION}
BRAHMS
SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN C MINOR, OPUS 68
Un poco sostenuto—Allegro
Andante sostenuto
Un poco allegretto e grazioso
Adagio—Più Andante—Allegro non troppo
ma con brio—Più Allegro
THURSDAY EVENING’S PERFORMANCE OF MOZART’S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 23 IS SUPPORTED BY A GIFT IN
MEMORY OF LEE AND GERALD FLAXER.
THURSDAY EVENING’S PERFORMANCE OF BRAHMS’S SYMPHONY NO. 1 IS SUPPORTED BY A GIFT FROM PETER
ANDERSEN IN MEMORY OF HIS MOTHER, MIRIAM ANDERSEN.
SATURDAY EVENING’S PERFORMANCE OF MOZART’S PIANO CONCERTO NO. 23 IS SUPPORTED BY A GIFT FROM
RICHARD AND NANCY HEATH IN HONOR OF FREDERICK E. WOLFE.
BANK OF AMERICA AND EMC CORPORATION ARE PROUD TO SPONSOR
THE BSO’S 2014-2015 SEASON.
The evening concerts will end about 10, the Friday concert about 3:30.
Concertmaster Malcolm Lowe performs on a Stradivarius violin, known as the “Lafont,” generously donated
to the Boston Symphony Orchestra by the O’Block Family.
Steinway and Sons Pianos, selected exclusively for Symphony Hall.
Yamaha CFX concert grand piano played by Maria João Pires provided by Yamaha Artist Services, New
York.
Special thanks to Fairmont Copley Plaza and Commonwealth Worldwide Chauffeured Transportation.
The program books for the Friday series are given in loving memory of Mrs. Hugh Bancroft by her daughters,
the late Mrs. A. Werk Cook and the late Mrs. William C. Cox.
Broadcasts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra are heard on 99.5 WCRB.
In consideration of the performers and those around you, please turn off all electronic devices during the
concert, including tablets, cellular phones, pagers, watch alarms, and messaging devices of any kind. Thank
you for your cooperation.
Please note that taking pictures of the orchestra—whether photographs or videos—is prohibited during
concerts.
The Program in Brief...
Three large-scale dramatic works by Schumann took shape between 1847 and 1855: his virtually unknown
opera Genoveva (the overture surfaces occasionally), the Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’ for soloists, chorus,
and orchestra (which occupied him on and off for nearly a decade), and the music inspired by Byron’s
dramatic poem Manfred, best-known for its powerful overture. Schu-mann biographer John Daverio observes
that in these works the composer “moved ever closer to his goal: the reconfiguration of music as literature.”
Schumann himself claimed he had never previously “devoted [himself] to a composition with such love and
energy as to Manfred.” The overture’s stabbing introductory chords give way to brooding music that
prefigures the passionate main body of the piece, which itself winds down to a quiet reminiscence of the
beginning.
As in all his mature works in the genre, Mozart in his A major piano concerto, K.488—written for himself to
play while at the height of his popularity in Vienna—strikes a perfect balance in the varied juxtapositions and
interactions of the orchestral winds, orchestral strings, and solo piano. The work’s intimate, chamber-musical
character is heightened by the omission of trumpets and drums from the modestly scaled orchestra, whose
woodwind section includes just one flute, two clarinets, and two bassoons. In the minor-mode slow
movement, the composer writes melancholy music suggesting the sort of deep self-reflection often associated
with an operatic character, the pianist here taking the role of solo singer; a contrasting middle section brings a
lovely major-mode episode spotlighting the orchestral winds. As is typical, the finale then finds Mozart at his
most lighthearted, as evidenced immediately by the jaunty main theme.
Brahms was forty-three when he finished his First Symphony in 1876. Though he already had several works
for orchestra behind him—notably the Piano Concerto No. 1 and Variations on a Theme by Haydn—a
symphony was something different, requiring a newfound comfort level in writing for the orchestra, and, still
more significantly, that he overcome his fear of following in Beethoven’s footsteps. And though Beethoven’s
influence is certainly to be felt in the First Symphony’s C minor-to-major progress, rhythmic thrust, and
motivically based construction, there is no mistaking the one composer for the other, given Brahms’s more
typical expansiveness and unequivocally 19th-century-Romantic musical language.
The work elicited conflicting responses when it was new, likely due to its seemingly disparate elements. The
lyricism of the two inner movements suggests a world quite different from the defiant, tension-filled opening
movement and boldly structured finale; and certainly we are nowadays more attuned to the contrapuntal
density of Brahms’s writing than his contemporaries would have been. Before the premiere, Brahms himself
characterized the work as “long and not exactly amiable.” But as we recognize today, it is the cumulative
impact that matters most: the full effect of the symphony is dependent upon the compositional craft that binds
the work together in its progress from the C minor struggle of the first movement through the mediating
regions of the Andante and Allegretto to the major-mode triumph of the closing pages.
Marc Mandel
Robert Schumann
Overture from music for Byron’s “Manfred,” Opus 115
ROBERT ALEXANDER SCHUMANN was born in Zwickau, Saxony, on June 8, 1810, and died in an
asylum at Endenich, near Bonn, on July 29, 1856. He wrote his music for Byron’s dramatic poem
“Manfred”—an overture and fifteen numbers, six of them musically complete, the rest serving as musical
accompaniment to spoken text—during 1848 and 1849, himself conducting the first performance of the
overture at a Leipzig Gewandhaus concert on March 14, 1852. Franz Liszt conducted the first performance of
the complete score on June 13, 1852, in Weimar.
THE SCORE OF THE OVERTURE calls for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns,
three trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.
Joseph von Wasielewski, Schumann’s concertmaster in Düsseldorf and his first biographer, recalled an
occasion of the composer’s reading aloud from Byron’s Manfred when “his voice suddenly failed him, tears
started from his eyes, and he was so overcome that he could read no further.” Byron fascinated Schumann,
who had set one of his poems to music in the 1840 song cycle called Myrthen, turned to his Hebrew Melodies
in 1849 in the immediate aftermath of the Manfred project, and long considered Corsair and Sardanapalus as
possible opera librettos.
Manfred, written 1816-17 when the poet was twenty-eight, is a dramatic poem that owes much to Goethe’s
Faust, still work-in-progress at that time, but which Byron had encountered in oral recitation. A noble orgy of
guilt and remorse, it reflects Byron’s feelings about his own incestuous summer liaison in 1813 with his halfsister, Augusta Leigh. (The causes of Manfred’s guilt are unnamed.) Had Schumann guessed at such a
connection, he would have been too scandalized to touch the poem; as it was, and at a time when he had been
plunged into despondency by Mendelssohn’s sudden death in November 1847, he was profoundly ready to
respond to Byron’s work with its sense of overwhelming sorrow and its highly colored Romantic language. He
noted that never before had he devoted himself “with such love and outlay of force to any composition as to
that of Manfred.”
Schumann’s music for Byron’s poem is some of his most imaginative and intensely felt work, and the overture
is a fair sample of the quality, though perforce not of the range of the complete Manfred score. It is a
commonplace that Schumann was not good at writing for orchestra—indeed the 1851 revision of the Fourth
Symphony comes dangerously close to making the point—but the Manfred Overture is a superlatively
accomplished piece of scoring, one, moreover, with a characteristic sound of its own. Three thunderclap
chords compel our attention to a dark and winding introduction. Gradually this becomes an impassioned quick
movement, which in turn will fall back to the tempo and mood of the opening.
Michael Steinberg
MICHAEL STEINBERG was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1976 to 1979, and after
that of the San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic. Oxford University Press has published
three compilations of his program notes, devoted to symphonies, concertos, and the great works for chorus
and orchestra.
THE FIRST UNITED STATES PERFORMANCE of Schumann’s “Manfred” Overture was in a concert at
the City Assembly Rooms, New York, on April 27, 1856, under the direction of Carl Bergmann, who also led
the first complete American performances of the full “Manfred” score, on May 8, 1869, with the Philharmonic
Society and the Liederkranz Chorus at New York’s Academy of Music.
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE of the “Manfred” Overture was given on February
25, 1882, during the orchestra’s first season, by Georg Henschel, subsequent performances being led by
Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil Paur, Karl Muck, Max Fiedler, Pierre Monteux, Serge Koussevitzky,
Leonard Bernstein, Charles Munch, Richard Burgin, Erich Leinsdorf, Joseph Silverstein, Neville Marriner,
Pascal Verrot, Marek Janowski, Bernard Haitink, James Levine (the most recent subscription performances,
in November 2004), and Shi-Yeon Sung (the most recent Tanglewood performance, on July 20, 2008). The
BSO has played Schumann’s complete “Manfred” music on four occasions, under Georg Henschel in 1884,
Wilhelm Gericke in 1886, Arthur Nikisch in 1892, and again under Gericke in 1899. In addition, Pierre
Monteux led three selections (none of them the overture) from the complete score in April 1922.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K.488
JOANNES CHRISOSTOMUS WOLFGANG GOTTLIEB MOZART—who began calling himself Wolfgango
Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777 (he used “Amadeus” only in jest)—was born in Salzburg,
Austria, on January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. He completed the A major concerto,
K.488, on March 2, 1786, and presumably played it in Vienna soon after.
IN ADDITION TO THE SOLO PIANO, the score calls for an orchestra of one flute, two clarinets, two
bassoons, two horns, and strings. (The composer suggested in a letter that in the absence of clarinets, their
lines might be cued into the violin and viola parts.) At these performances, Maria João Pires plays Mozart’s
own first-movement cadenza, which the composer entered into the autograph manuscript.
Figaro was the big project for the spring of 1786, and it was ready for performance on May 1, but Mozart
repeatedly interrupted himself, dashing off his one-acter The Impresario for a party at the Imperial palace at
Schönbrunn, and writing three piano concertos, presumably for his own use that year. The A major is the
middle one of the three, being preceded by the spacious E-flat, K.482, completed at the end of December, and
being followed just three weeks later by the somber C minor, K.491. Its neighbors are bigger. Both have
trumpets and drums, and the C minor is one of the relatively rare works to allow itself both oboes and
clarinets. The A major adds just one flute plus pairs of clarinets, bassoons, and horns to the strings, and with
the last in the whole series, K.595 in B-flat (January 1791), it is the most chamber-musical of Mozart’s mature
piano concertos. It is gently spoken and, at least until the finale, shows little ambition in the direction of
pianistic brilliance. Lyric and softly moonlit—as the garden scene of Figaro might be, were there no sexual
menace in it—it shares something in atmosphere with later works in the same key, the great violin sonata,
K.526, the Clarinet Quintet, and the Clarinet Concerto.
The first movement is music of lovely and touching gallantry. Its second chord, darkened by the unexpected
G-natural in the second violins, already suggests the melancholy that will cast fleeting shadows throughout the
concerto and dominate its slow movement altogether. The two main themes are related more than they are
contrasted, and part of what is at once fascinating and delightful is the difference in the way Mozart scores
them. He begins both with strings alone. The first he continues with an answering phrase just for winds,
punctuated twice by forceful string chords, and that leads to the first passage for the full orchestra. But now
that the sound of the winds has been introduced and established, Mozart can proceed more subtly. In the new
theme, a bassoon joins the violins nine measures into the melody, and, as though encouraged by that, the flute
appears in mid-phrase, softly to add its sound to the texture, with horns and clarinets arriving just in time to
reinforce the cadence. When the same melody reappears about a minute-and-a-half later, the piano, having
started it off, is happy to retire and leave it to the violins and bassoon and flute who had invented it in the first
place, but it cannot after all refrain from doubling the descending scales with quiet broken octaves, adding
another unobtrusively achieved, perfectly gauged touch of fresh color.
Slow movements in minor keys are surprisingly uncommon in Mozart, and this one is in fact the last he writes.
An “adagio” marking is rare, too, and this movement is an altogether astonishing transformation of the
siciliano style. The orchestra’s first phrase harks back to “Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden” (“He who has
found a sweetheart”), Osmin’s animadversions in The Abduction from the Seraglio on the proper treatment of
women, but nothing in the inner life of that grouchy, fig-picking harem-steward could ever have motivated the
exquisite dissonances brought about here by the bassoon’s imitation of clarinet and violins. Throughout,
Mozart the pianist imagines himself as the ideal opera singer—only the Andante in the famous C major
concerto, K.467, is as vocal—and a singer, furthermore, proud of her flawlessly achieved changes of register
and of her exquisitely cultivated taste in expressive embellishment.
After the restraint of the first movement and the melancholia of the second, Mozart gives us a finale of
captivating high spirits. It keeps the pianist very busy in music that comes close to perpetual motion and in
which there is plenty to engage our ear, now so alert to the delicacy and overflowing invention with which
Mozart uses those few and quiet instruments.
Michael Steinberg
THE FIRST UNITED STATES PERFORMANCE of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, K.488, took place in
Boston’s Music Hall on December 19, 1878, at a concert of the Harvard Musical Association under the
direction of Carl Zerrahn, with H.G. Tucker as piano soloist.
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCES of Mozart’s A major piano concerto, K.488, took
place under Serge Koussevitzky’s direction on February 8 and 9, 1929, with Nikolai Orloff as soloist.
Subsequent BSO performances have featured Bruce Simonds (with Richard Burgin conducting), Artur
Schnabel and Arthur Rubinstein (Koussevitzky), Leon Fleisher (Burgin), Boris Goldovsky (Pierre Luboschutz),
John Browning (Erich Leinsdorf); Yuji Takahashi, Maurizio Pollini, and Peter Serkin (Seiji Ozawa); Malcolm
Frager (David Zinman), Radu Lupu (Kazuyoshi Akiyama), Misha Dichter (Klaus Tennstedt), Christoph
Eschenbach (conducting from the keyboard), Alicia de Larrocha (Jiˇrí Bˇelohlávek), Richard Goode (Helmuth
Rilling), Keith Jarrett (Dennis Russell Davies), Ignat Solzhenitsyn (James Conlon), Maria João Pires (in April
1998, with Robert Spano conducting), Gianluca Cascioli (Jahja Ling), Jonathan Biss (Sir Neville Marriner),
Richard Goode again (Bernard Haitink), Mitsuko Uchida (Sir Colin Davis), Leon Fleisher (James Levine),
Paul Lewis (the most recent Tanglewood performance, with Christoph von Dohnányi on August 12, 2012),
and Radu Lupu (the most recent subscription performances, with Dohnányi in February 2013).
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68
JOHANNES BRAHMS was born in Hamburg, Germany, on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3,
1897. He completed his First Symphony in 1876, though some of the sketches date back to the 1860s. Otto
Dessoff conducted the first performance on November 4, 1876, at Karlsruhe. Additional performances that
season prompted further revisions, particularly in the second and third movements, before the score was
published in 1877.
THE SCORE OF THE SYMPHONY calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and
contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings.
Given that the First Symphony of Johannes Brahms is one of the most familiar in the repertoire, one of those
iconic works that seems to define what a symphony essentially is, it is good to remember that it was written by
a man terrified of writing symphonies, perennially uncertain in dealing with the orchestra, and unsure of the
path he wanted to take. All these elements define Brahms as a man and as a composer. So does the splendid
result, a testament not only to his genius but to his courage and his tireless patience. This work of remarkable
power, passion, and unity was forged in anxiety and sometimes despair through a period of over fifteen years.
Its real history goes back further than that, to the heady months when Brahms was discovered by Robert
Schumann, who in an instantly notorious article proclaimed that this student twenty years old was the coming
savior of German music. This new genius, Schumann declared, was a real Beethovener, keeping faith with the
old forms and genres like symphony and string quartet. That article brought Brahms fame and a host of
enemies before he had done much to earn either. There began a lifetime of trial in the spotlight.
In his article Robert had urged Brahms to produce big pieces—symphonies and concertos. Reeling from the
implications of the article (and from what happened soon after, Robert being committed to an asylum) Brahms
attempted to obey: after several false starts he embarked on a gigantic piano concerto. In fact he had not yet
mastered large forms, and he was not comfortable with the orchestra either. His friend and adviser, the
violinist and composer Joseph Joachim, burst into laughter when he saw the first orchestral draft of the piece.
It took Brahms five years of struggle to complete the First Piano Concerto. Yet in the end, for all its
uncertainties and its manifest flaws, the First is one of the great concertos—and the first monumental
testament to Brahms's courage and patience. But at the time of its completion in 1859, clearly he decided that
never again was he going to mount an ambitious orchestral work until he knew what he was doing.
The first thing history knows of the First Symphony was contained in a package Brahms's one-time love Clara
Schumann received in 1862. It was a draft of the Allegro of the eventual First, without the introduction. The
music “is rather tough,” Clara wrote a friend, “but I soon got used to it.” By this point the musical world,
having absorbed his early works, was waiting for a symphony. And Brahms well knew that his enemies were
waiting for it to fail.
Then the symphony dropped out of sight for the next fourteen years. In the early 1870s Brahms groaned to a
friend, “I’ll never write a symphony! You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we’re always hearing a
giant like that behind us!” By “like that” he meant, of course, Beethoven. Yet at that point he was still working
doggedly toward the symphony. Besides his fear of the competition, what held Brahms up for so long?
Probably it had something to do with uncertainty about what he wanted for the later movements. The eventual
slow movement would be traditional enough in conception. But for whatever reason, Brahms, who wrote fine
and fresh scherzos, in this case did not want a standard symphonic one. What, then? In the end he created
something new, the Brahmsian intermezzo, a medium-tempo movement that can range in tone from lyrical to
passionate.
Secondly, at some point he decided he wanted an end-weighted symphony, meaning one whose finale is the
most expansive and intense of the movements. Having already drafted a powerful and intense first movement,
he now faced the daunting prospect of creating a finale to top it. (This is the dilemma of all composers who
want to write a finale-directed work.)
There was one more issue: his lingering uncertainty with the orchestra. Brahms was one of the most eclectic of
artists, drawing ideas from the past going back to the Renaissance, yet at the same time he had one of the most
distinctive stylistic signatures of any composer. The exception was when it came to an individual orchestral
sound, which the early orchestral works lack. He refused, in short, to write a symphony until his handling of
the orchestra was as distinctive as everything else about his music. He achieved that, at last, in the Variations
on a Theme by Haydn, from 1874. There the world first heard the Brahms orchestra, massive and rich in color
and texture, though also capable of great delicacy.
In summer 1876 it was time. Brahms headed for the Isle of Rügen to finish the symphony. As a creator always
inspired by the landscape around him, he probably hoped its rugged cliffs would get into the piece. Surely they
did.
The piece begins on a note of searing drama: keening, searching melodies spreading outward, and the
pounding timpani Brahms always associated with fate. (See the “All flesh is as grass” movement of his
German Requiem, and his Song of the Fates.) The introduction lays out two essential ideas that will mark the
symphony, a three-note chromatic motif and a soaring line spanning an octave. Meanwhile the first movement
will turn out to be opening act of an implied four-movement narrative: from darkness in the first movement to
light in the finale—that being the same narrative as Beethoven's Fifth.
The introduction gives way to a 6/8 Allegro that never flags in its driving, churning energy. It features the kind
of innovation common in Brahms, for all his devotion to tradition: the two principal motifs, the three-note
chromatic bit and the soaring bit, are presented together in counterpoint, rather than successively. Meanwhile
the dominant rhythmic motif, three pounding notes, recalls in a different context the famous motif from
Beethoven's Fifth. At the end of the movement a pensive coda is troubled by the fateful timpani of the
opening.
Second comes a slow movement in ABA form, marked by Brahms's singular, melting, heart-tugging lyricism.
There is meanwhile a sense of intimacy in this movement that approaches the effect of chamber music. That
will become a familiar territory in Brahms's orchestral works. The middle section offers more lyricism in its
flowing themes that gather to something of a recall of the first movement’s intensity.
Then comes the intermezzo. It begins with a blithe clarinet theme that is developed at length. The middle
section’s pulsing theme recalls the second movement in gathering toward another recall of the opening
movement. The fateful quality of the symphony’s first pages still lingers in the background.
All along, the finale has been the goal, when the tensions of the first movement and the fraught lyricism of the
middle ones find their apotheosis. The finale’s opening pages recall the shadows and searching of the first
movement, and the fateful question it left unanswered. The music reaches a breathless climax, then as if with a
burst of sunlight through clouds, by way of a French horn we hear the call of an alphorn. Here in a moment of
uncanny C major beauty the First Symphony turns toward solace, fulfillment, and finally triumph.
As in Beethoven's Ninth, what follows is the certification of that fulfillment in the form of a chorale theme that
the whole symphony has been striving toward. That theme, unforgettable from the first time you hear it, is the
soul of the finale, which still has tumultuous stretches to work through. The coda is unbounded exaltation.
Surely part of that exaltation is Brahms's own, after so many years and so much anguish having accomplished
something worthy to place at the feet of the giants of the past, whose tramp he would never stop hearing.
Inevitably came the moment when some unwise person noted to the composer that his big theme in the finale
recalled Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Brahms's response was characteristic: “Any jackass can see that!” As usual,
Brahms left his real point hanging: he meant that while his work had Beethoven all over it, he had still brought
to the symphony something deeply personal and original. When the First premiered in 1876 the response was
cautious, but in fact the genre had been languishing for decades and in the end, with one stroke, Brahms had
revitalized it. The symphonies of Mahler, Dvoˇrák, Sibelius, and many others rode that revival. If Brahms was
something of a musical loner, as much Classic as Romantic, as much conservative as progressive, his impact
on the future of music from conservative to progressive has been profound and lasting.
Jan Swafford
JAN SWAFFORD is a prizewinning composer and writer whose books include biographies of Johannes Brahms
and Charles Ives, “The Vintage Guide to Classical Music,” and, published last summer, “Beethoven: Anguish
and Triumph.” He is currently working on a biography of Mozart.
THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE of Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 was given by Leopold Damrosch
and his orchestra on December 15, 1877, in New York’s Steinway Hall. The first Boston performance was
given by Carl Zerrahn on January 3, 1878, in a Harvard Musical Association concert at the Music Hall.
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERFORMANCE of the Brahms First was during the
orchestra’s first season, on December 10, 1881, under Georg Henschel, who programmed it again in
December 1882 and December 1883. It has also been played in BSO concerts under the direction of Wilhelm
Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil Paur, Karl Muck, Max Fiedler, Ernst Schmidt, Pierre Monteux, Serge
Koussevitzky, Richard Burgin, Sir Adrian Boult, Charles Munch, Guido Cantelli, Carl Schuricht, Eugene
Ormandy, Erich Leinsdorf, William Steinberg, Rafael Kubelik, Bruno Maderna, Joseph Silverstein, Seiji
Ozawa, Georg Solti, Leonard Bernstein, Pascal Verrot, Charles Dutoit, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, James
Levine, Bernard Haitink (including the most recent subscription performances in November 2009), Christoph
von Dohnányi, and Vladimir Jurowski (the most recent Tanglewood performance, on July 19, 2013).
To Read and Hear More...
John Daverio’s Robert Schumann: Herald of a “New Poetic Age” provides thoroughly informed consideration
of the composer’s life and music (Oxford paperback). Eric Frederick Jensen’s Schumann is a good biography
in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford). Schumann: A Chorus of Voices, by John C. Tibbetts, offers varied
perspectives on the composer and his work from a wide assortment of performers, scholars, biographers,
critics, and commentators (Amadeus Press). John Worthen’s Robert Schumann: The Life and Death of a
Musician is a detailed treatment of the composer’s life based on a wealth of contemporary documentation
(Yale University Press). Peter Ostwald’s Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius is a study of the
composer’s medical and psychological history, likewise based on surviving documentation (Northeastern
University Press). Robert Schumann: The Man and his Music, an anthology edited by Alan Walker, includes
discussion of Schumann’s Manfred in Frank Cooper’s chapter on the composer’s“Operatic and Dramatic
Music” (Barrie and Jenkins).
Bernard Haitink recorded the Manfred Overture with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (Philips).
The Boston Symphony Orchestra recorded it with Charles Munch conducting in 1959 (RCA). Other
recordings of varying vintage include James Levine’s with the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon),
George Szell’s with the Cleveland Orchestra (Sony), Claudio Abbado’s with Orchestra Mozart (Deutsche
Grammophon), Rafael Kubelik’s with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (Sony), Christian
Thielemann’s with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), Wilhelm Furtwängler’s with the
Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), and Arturo Toscanini’s with the NBC Symphony Orchestra
(RCA).
The important modern biography of Mozart is Maynard Solomon’s Mozart: A Life (HarperPerennial
paperback). Peter Gay’s wonderfully readable Mozart is a concise, straightforward introduction to the
composer’s life, reputation, and artistry (Penguin paperback). John Rosselli’s The life of Mozart is one of the
compact composer biographies in the series “Musical Lives” (Cambridge paperback). Christoph Wolff’s
Mozart at the Gateway to his Fortune: Serving the Emperor, 1788-1791 takes a close look at the realities,
prospects, and interrupted promise of the composer’s final years (Norton). For further delving, there are
Stanley Sadie’s Mozart: The Early Years, 1756-1781 (Oxford); Volkmar Braunbehrens’s Mozart in Vienna,
1781-1791, which focuses on the composer’s final decade (HarperPerennial paperback); Julian Rushton’s
Mozart: His Life and Work, in the “Master Musicians” series (Oxford), and Robert Gutman’s Mozart: A
Cultural Biography (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Harvest paperback). Peter Clive’s Mozart and his Circle: A
Biographical Dictionary is a handy reference work with entries on virtually anyone you can think of who
figured in Mozart’s life (Yale University Press). The Mozart Compendium: A Guide to Mozart’s Life and
Music, edited by H.C. Robbins Landon, includes an entry by Robert Levin on the concertos (Schirmer). A
Guide to the Concerto, edited by Robert Layton, includes a chapter by Denis Matthews on “Mozart and the
Concerto” (Oxford paperback). Alfred Einstein’s Mozart: The Man, the Music is a classic older study (Oxford
paperback). Other older books still worth knowing are Cuthbert Girdlestone’s Mozart and his Piano
Concertos (Dover paperback) and Arthur Hutchings’s A Companion to Mozart’s Piano Concertos (Oxford
paperback). Michael Steinberg’s program note on Mozart’s A major piano concerto, K.488, is in his
compilation volume The Concerto–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford paperback). Donald Francis Tovey’s note on
K.488 is among his Essays in Musical Analysis (also Oxford).
Maria João Pires has made two recordings of Mozart’s A major concerto, K.488: with Frans Brüggen and the
Orchestra of the Salzburg Mozarteum (Deutsche Grammophon), and with Theodor Guschlbauer and the
Gulbenkian Foundation Chamber Orchestra Lisbon (Erato and Apex). Other recordings include—listed
alphabetically by soloist, all of whom double as conductor unless otherwise noted—Géza Anda’s with the
Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum (Deutsche Grammophon), Daniel Barenboim’s with the
Berlin Philharmonic (Warner Classics), Alfred Brendel’s with Neville Marriner and the Academy of St.
Martin in the Fields (Philips), Imogen Cooper’s with the Northern Sinfonia (Avie), Leon Fleisher’s with the
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra (Sony), Jeno Jandó’s with András Ligeti and the Concentus Hungaricus (Naxos),
Murray Perahia’s with the English Chamber Orchestra (Sony), Maurizio Pollini’s with Karl Böhm and the
Vienna Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon), and Mitsuko Uchida’s with Jeffrey Tate and the English
Chamber Orchestra (Philips).
Important books about Brahms include Jan Swafford’s Johannes Brahms: A Biography (Vintage paperback);
Malcolm MacDonald’s Brahms in the “Master Musicians” series (Schirmer); Johannes Brahms: Life and
Letters as selected and annotated by Styra Avins (Oxford); The Compleat Brahms, edited by conductor/scholar
Leon Botstein, a compendium of essays on Brahms’s music by a wide variety of scholars, composers, and
performers, including Botstein himself (Norton); Walter Frisch’s Brahms: The Four Symphonies (Yale
paperback), and Peter Clive’s Brahms and his World: A Biographical Dictionary (Scarecrow Press). Important
older biographies include Karl Geiringer’s Brahms (Oxford paperback) and The Life of Johannes Brahms by
Florence May, who knew Brahms personally (published originally in 1905 but periodically available in reprint
editions). John Horton’s Brahms Orchestral Music in the series of BBC Music Guides includes discussion of
his symphonies, concertos, serenades, Haydn Variations, and overtures (University of Washington paperback);
for more detailed analysis, go to Michael Musgrave’s The Music of Brahms (Oxford paperback) or Bernard
Jacobson’s The Music of Johannes Brahms (originally Fairleigh Dickinson). Michael Steinberg’s notes on the
four Brahms symphonies are in his compilation volume The Symphony–A Listener’s Guide (Oxford
paperback). Donald Francis Tovey’s notes on the Brahms symphonies are among his Essays in Musical
Analysis (also Oxford).
Bernard Haitink recorded the four Brahms symphonies with the Boston Symphony Orchestra between 1990
and 1994 (Philips); a more recent release has him conducting all four symphonies live with the London
Symphony Orchestra (LSO Live). Earlier BSO accounts of the Brahms First were made in 1956 by Charles
Munch (RCA), in 1963 by Erich Leinsdorf (also RCA, as part of his complete Brahms symphony cycle with
the orchestra), and in 1977 by Seiji Ozawa (Deutsche Grammophon). Other noteworthy cycles of the four
symphonies include Daniel Barenboim’s with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Erato); Nikolaus
Harnoncourt’s with the Berlin Philharmonic (Teldec); Marek Janowski’s with the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra (PentaTone); Herbert von Karajan’s early-1960s cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic (Deutsche
Grammophon); James Levine’s with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA) and live with the Vienna
Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon); Charles Mackerras’s with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, in “period
style” with interpretive choices suggested by documentation from Meiningen, Germany, where Brahms
himself frequently conducted the orchestra (Telarc); and Simon Rattle’s with the Berlin Philharmonic (EMI).
For those interested enough in historic recordings to listen through dated sound, both Arturo Toscanini and
Wilhelm Furtwängler left multiple accounts of the Brahms First Symphony (various labels). Toscanini’s live
performances with the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 (on Christmas Eve, from his very first concert
with that ensemble) and May 1940 (from Carnegie Hall) are outstanding, as is Furtwängler’s 1951 broadcast
with the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg. There is also a very beautiful 1953 recording
by Toscanini protégé Guido Cantelli with the Philharmonia Orchestra (Testament). The Brahms recordings of
Willem Mengelberg with the Concertgebouw Orchestra (previously available on Naxos and Tahra) and of
Felix Weingartner with the London Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra (previously available on
Living Era, Naxos, and EMI) will be important to anyone interested in the recorded history and performance
practice of these works.
Marc Mandel
Guest Artists
Bernard Haitink
Bernard Haitink’s conducting career began sixty years ago with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in his
native Holland. He went on to be chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra for twenty-seven years, as
well as music director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and principal
conductor of the London Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He
is Patron of the Radio Philharmonic and Conductor Emeritus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as an
honorary member of both the Berlin Philharmonic and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. His 2014-15 season
began with an anniversary concert with the Radio Philharmonic in the Concertgebouw, and includes return
visits to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (opening their season with Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis),
four programs with the London Symphony Orchestra in London, Madrid, and Paris, and the conclusion of a
Brahms cycle with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Amsterdam and Paris. He also conducts the Berlin
Philharmonic in the Baden-Baden Easter Festival and returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Boston
Symphony Orchestra. Committed to the development of young musical talent, he gives an annual conducting
master class at the Lucerne Easter Festival. This season, in addition, he gives conducting classes to students of
the Hochschule der Kunst, Zurich, in collaboration with the Musikkollegium Winterthur, and a workshop with
students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in conjunction with players from the London
Symphony Orchestra. Bernard Haitink has an extensive discography for Philips, Decca, and EMI, as well as
the many new live recording labels established by orchestras themselves in recent years, such as the London
Symphony, Chicago Symphony, and Bayerischer Rundfunk. He has received many awards and honors in
recognition of his services to music, including several honorary doctorates, an honorary Knighthood and
Companion of Honour in the United Kingdom, and the House Order of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands.
Bernard Haitink made his Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in February 1971. Besides concerts in Boston,
he has led the orchestra at Tanglewood (where he appeared for the first time in 1994), Carnegie Hall (most
recently in January and February 2014, repeating his two BSO subscription programs of last winter), and on a
2001 tour of European summer music festivals. Prior to this spring, when he closes the BSO’s subscription
season with two weeks of concerts, his most recent BSO appearances were at Symphony Hall for two
subscription programs in January/February 2014, when he led music of Ravel, Stucky, Schumann, and
Brahms, and at Tanglewood in August 2013, leading music of Mozart, Mahler, and the BSO’s traditional
season-ending performance of Beethoven’s Ninth.
Maria João Pires
One of the finest musicians of her generation, Maria João Pires continues to transfix audiences with the
spotless integrity, eloquence, and vitality of her art. Born on July 23, 1944, in Lisbon, she gave her first public
performance in 1948. Since 1970 she has dedicated herself to reflecting on the influence of art on life,
community, and education, and in trying to develop new ways of implementing pedagogic theories within
society. In the last ten years she has held many workshops with students from all around the world, and has
taken her philosophy and teaching to Japan, Brazil, Portugal, France, and Switzerland. More recently she
joined the teaching faculty of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, where she is working with a
group of highly gifted young pianists. Together under the impetus of Maria João Pires they have initiated the
“Partitura Project”; the aim of this project is to create an altruistic dynamic between artists of different
generations and to offer an alternative in a world too often focused on competitiveness. Hand in hand with this
project is the project “Equinox,” also headed by Maria João Pires, which is a social program for young
disadvantaged children between the ages of six and fourteen who are being helped through choral singing.
Both of these projects are integrated under the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel umbrella. In the 2014-15
season, Maria João Pires performs with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orkest, Boston
Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Staatsoper Orchester Berlin, Orchestre National de Lille, Lucerne Symphony,
London Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta National de Espagña, Orchestre de Capitole du Toulouse, Orchestra
Filarmonica della Scala, Budapest Festival Orchestra, and Chamber Orchestra of Europe. She continues
chamber music performances with Antonio Meneses and Augustin Dumay. Recitals as part of the Partitura
Project include performances in Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canary Islands, France (including
Théâtre de la Ville, Paris), Istanbul, and at London’s Wigmore Hall. Maria João Pires has a large and varied
discography including solo music, chamber music, and orchestral repertoire. Recent recordings include
Beethoven’s piano concertos 3 and 4 with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Daniel Harding on
Onyx. For her 70th birthday in summer 2014, Erato re-released many of her distinguished recordings from the
1970s and 1980s, and Deutsche Grammophon released a box set of her complete solo recordings for that
company. Maria João Pires made her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut in August 1989 at Tanglewood, as
soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G, K.453, subsequently appearing with the BSO on four later
occasions, always in concertos of Mozart: in January/February 1991 in New Haven and at New York’s Avery
Fisher Hall (No. 20 in D minor, K.466); in March 1994, for her subscription series debut (No. 9 in E-flat,
K.271); subscription appearances in April 1998 (No. 23 in A, K.488), and subscription performances—her
most recent BSO appearances—in April 1999 (No. 9 in E-flat, K.271), as well as an appearance that same
week at Carnegie Hall.